1st Days on the Dig

After a long day of travel - which included flights from Chicago to Madrid, Madrid to Barcelona, Barcelona to Menorca, and then a bus from the airport - I finally arrived at my residency in Ciutadella on Sunday.  I was exhausted but relieved that nothing major went wrong.  I met all of the other students on the dig as well as the staff.  There are only ten of us students, but the small size is really nice.

Today (Monday) we started with the course and excavation.  Normally we will do lab work and lectures in the morning and early afternoon and the excavate in the evening (until about 9 pm) in order to avoid the heat.  Today, however, it was cloudy and so we excavated first thing and did so until about 3.  We got a general overview of the site and then went straight to work.  I am currently working on a tomb that had been exposed earlier this summer, but not finished.  The burial is disarticulated (meaning that it is not possible to make out the skeletal structure of the individual buried) and so the bones are strewn everywhere.  The tomb was probably used multiple times and so not all of the bones belong to the same person.  I found a lot personally including a good-sized and well intact vertebra.  There are parts of a skull in the area I am working on and they should be excavated soon.

I currently don't have any photos of the excavation site, but I promise they will come soon.  I did have a chance to walk around Ciutadella and take some pictures.  The town is much bigger than I expected and it is very beautiful.

Here's a view from the roof of our building:

The Port in town:

Random street with typical architecture:

More pictures to follow.

Best,
Adam