Wandering unsupervised in various real and imaginary places. Detritus reflects my interests in robotics, travel, history and the odder aspects of the world around me.
A day of magnificent weather. Blue skies, sun, warmth but just enough gentle breeze to keep things comfortable. It could not be improved upon.
And the archeology? Well, not bad. I should not be complaining. We are actually working on two different and interesting archeological "features". I have already mentioned the fancy cement floor of the fort commander's residence. We continued to expose it bit by bit. Admittedly this was fairly monotonous work, not a lot of surprises along the way. Just a lot of soil to be shifted. At one point we did find this perfectly square clay tile set into the mix of rubble and clay. Why? We shall never know. Alas it did not have a maker's mark, graffito or critter paw print.
Here is the trench at the end of day three.
What we have here is nice white cement on the right. Grotty, pebble filled cement on the left. And in between a groove full of random stones. It also has a bunch of soft soil and even some empty spaces. Notice that it is slightly curved? Current theory, subject of course to revision, is that this is the foundation of one of the "Severan Round Houses". These are an enigma, and appear to be unique in Roman forts. Here is an aerial view elsewhere in the fort, of a couple of round houses that have been preserved.
These things popped up in the very early 200s, and were only in use for a few years. Nobody can explain them definitively. Theories abound. They resemble the houses used by the native Britons. So were they for Prisoners of War captured when Septimus Severus tried to march up and conquer Scotland? Or for "loyal" Britons who were sheltered under the walls of the Roman fort for their safety? (The fort in this era was adjacent, the square foundations you see above are earlier...and later, it is a confusing site). Some even claim that they resemble the huts used by Septimus' North African troops. We don't know the answer, in part because without exception the round houses are almost entirely free of artifacts. So, as a day of digging it was good but I don't expect to find much in the way of clever artifacts in the next few days, and we seem to have the features fairly well explained by now. But it was a marvelous day. It was so nice in fact that I decided to walk the two miles back to the pub which is my home away from home on the excavations. Five different diggers slowed down to offer me rides, all of which I declined. Sun, gentle tail wind, time to think and relax, some days are just to nice to be riding in a car. And at the end of the trail....
Cement. Can I make it sound interesting? It will be a challenge. This is looking more like the fort commander's residence and in theory there should be some good stuff around. But it was one of those instances where the fort was very much leveled and room made for something else. So when I was trying to figure out why we were only finding cruddy looking collapsed stones instead of nicely made walls I guess the professionalism of the demolition crew deserves honorable mention. They razed this little mini-villa down to floor level. Here is the stuff we are chasing. Nice cement.
And here are things once we removed that bit of manky stone that was in yesterday's post. We have nice white cement on the right of the trench. A smaller patch of slightly less nice stuff on the left. And in the middle somebody has gouged out a whopping great hole and filled it with a jumble of rocks, some of which - sticking out like the top of an iceberg - gave us so much puzzlement yesterday.
And here is a close up. Yep. Nice cement. Notice the crack in it. This floor has been bashed about a bit but is really in decent shape considering it was in active use for perhaps 40 years then build over and tromped on by soldiers, horses and perhaps monks for another few centuries after that.
Well, although I like an interesting feature as well as anybody who has been bitten by the archeology bug, it is always nice to find a few things which have a more "personal" touch. Not treasures, just things that someone once held and pondered.
A few nice bits of tile. Of no value but still fun to find. Sometimes when my attention wanders, or perhaps when my keenly tuned digger's eyes have not had enough to focus on, I start seeing odd stuff. In previous posts I have commented on the phenomena of soft "mudstone" being transformed by time and water into shapes that for sure look like the hand of man. Or perhaps some other part of man in the subcategory I call "Mudstone Willies". No such luck today. You will have to settle for a Mudstone Smurf Hat.
More digs tomorrow of course. The weather looks fine and I have found one small corner of the Inn that actually has decent wifi. Will I be back with finds of magnificence or just more small odd stuff. I'd like to do both.
As anticipated I am working my way through some internet challenges. Posting may or may not follow actual days of digging. It was good to come back. Familiar faces. More or less familiar spots on the site, places where I had excavated last year, or years earlier that now look much different. Every year when you show up you have a different job assignment. This year the theme, at least at the start of week one, is find the cement. Yes, cement. The Romans made stuff called "Opus Signinum" out of mortar and crushed tile/pottery. It has held up very well over time, I will post a few monumental examples when in Rome. But to find this upscale stuff on a distant frontier fort is, shall we say, atypical. But here it is:
It is not something that turns up just anywhere. It would only be found in what the Time Team crew would refer to as a "High Stay-tus Building". Such as, speculatively, the home of the Fort Commander, circa 200 AD. What you see above is at the west end of a building. It appears to peek out at another area 20 feet away. Our job on a fine sunny Monday was to trace it, connecting up the two ends and perhaps along the way finding..... Well the stuff is supposed to be water proof, so there was some enthusiasm for this being a pool or part of a private bath. Maybe it would have an underfloor heating system. Or whatever, it is so rarely found on site that you just can't tell.
So off we go. The area in the center is my patch. You can see the Opus Sig as the white band in the foreground. The brownish layer is some kind of sub flooring, it was soft and easy to trowel back. The stones, oh, surely just a bit of random rock. Mid day. The random looking rocks appear to be getting organized, almost trying to be a half circle. Well, they need to be explored a bit more.
And end of day. To the left and to the right, fairly bland, soft sub flooring material. And right down the middle...a dense cluster of stones in no particular order but with fairly defined edges. What does it mean?
Practically speaking it means two things. 1. Time to sleep on it. In the morning the Wise will have a ruling for us. Explore further or take it out. 2. We did not make much headway on exposing our Roman cement floor.
As always when I travel to the Hinterlands a perhaps unnecessary apology. Sometimes modern technology falters in remote places with thick stone walls. Updates as possible, hopefully daily. This post timed to coincide with the first round at the annual Jet Lag Drinks Hour. clink.
I suppose I am not qualified to comment on anybody else's life. But I suspect that many people have set routines. Work is 9 - 5 Monday through Friday. Weekends are yardwork, Friday night fish fry, watching sporting events of one sort or another. Repeat. I can't remember ever living that way. At least for the last decade life has had more of an up and down, sawtooth pattern to it. The sharp pointy parts could be a stretch of concentrated ER shifts or another round of (extended) family crisis. The intervals between were brief respites, always with another serrated edge approaching fast. After a while you get used to it. It becomes a calculus of balancing naps, caffeine, griping conversations with one's Spouse (we have a policy of alternating gripes) and trying to keep in mind the many positives in our worlds. The last couple of weeks feel like the first time I have actually been Retired. Prior to that it was Pseudo Retirment. I stood down from the ER but went straight into the maelstrom of coaching FIRST Robotics. Then back to clinic work for the summer. Then a stint as a Tech School student. Back to FIRST Robotics. It was all stress, but a good kind of stress on the whole. Just four more challenging things to get done. Three. Two. One. Robotics is over. My schedule......wide open. In a few days I am off to England for the annual archeology trip. After that a bit of add on travel fun. Responsibilities? Stress? People expecting me to do this or that difficult thing at a specific time? Nah. I will be spending some quality time with ancient citizens who could not have even imagined my existence, undemanding folks whose day to day concerns ended 1800 years ago. And after that? Oh, I suppose I will continue to go through the cafeteria line of life repeatedly. Hmmm...that looks like something that will be fun but stressful and probably beyond my current or projected abilities. "Gimme a big helping of that. Oh, another couple of scoops if you please". But until then, off to green fields.
All the matches from our two FIRST Robotics tournaments are now at least in theory available on line. I say in theory because some of them appear to wink on and off and others may or may not have functional sound. It's hard for me to watch these. Having been so wrapped up in the FIRST Robotics build and competition season I can see too many small things, things that cost us points or a victory. I have already mentioned our running fight against a legion of mechanical and software gremlins. They say baseball is a game of inches. Well, robotics is a game of millimeters. When you see our robot fail to deliver a gear in autonomous mode it is not missing by a mile, it is missing by a fraction of a degree in its angle of approach. Worn carpet, faulty placement of the robot in set up, heck, maybe evil spirits all come into play. The team did heroic trouble shooting and driving improvisation to do as well as they did. And we learned more by an average tournament season than we would have in either a cake walk or a total system collapse. Machines are not perfect. Neither are humans. You zig when you should have zagged, you reach too quickly or too slowly to drop a game piece into the scoring slot. Even the battered up game field sometimes cost us. We lost one match when the gear receiver partly broke but play was continued. A few matches later we were out there again. This time it fell off entirely and had to be replaced. We went on to win that match. Of course with a few elite exceptions all the other teams are in a similar situation. Everyone wins, or loses, matches based on the razor thin balance of glitches made by the machines and humans on your alliance weighed against those of the other side. Being naturally focused in on our own robot we likely don't see those other events very clearly. All the matches for team 5826 can be found HERE. Knowing all too well which sensors, which motors, which software parameters were on the fritz at various times I cringe watching some of them. But in almost all there were some things that were done well, very well in fact. I consider the best match of the season to be one that we actually lost narrowly but carried our alliance almost all the way to the Victor's laurels. But in terms of available video that shows Team 5826 running well, I suggest the one below. We are in red colors. Look for our numbers...
Just a few days until the annual Spring peregrinations begin. The preparations don't actually take very long. I would hardly be a suitable heir to the Trowelsworthy title if I didn't keep at ready a packed bag near the door at all times. It contains inconspicuous garb for all weathers and an assortment of currency, much of it almost as good as officially printed notes. Something about traveling just naturally draws me into one of my several alternative identities, and when heading off the England it is always Badger Trowelsworthy who boards the trans Atlantic flight. Yes, the passport says something else, but Lord Trowelsworthy is quite comfortable with traveling incognito. It is entirely possible that some of my archeology pals who know me only as "Badger" don't actually know the moniker that the tedious and pesky real world insists on considering to be True. But while it is a comfortable persona, it does come with a few wrinkles. I for instance actually start to think like a slightly disreputable minor aristocrat. I in fact, worry about Trowelsworthy Hall, the illusionary Manse that has been the traditional home of the Trowelsworthys for centuries.
There have been repeated attempts by junior members of a vagrant branch of the family to lay hands upon the property in my absence. Oh, Otteria and Biff are cunning and persistent - admirable qualities to be sure - but I have stayed a step ahead of them so far. For one thing the exact location of the Manor House remains ambiguous. Many locations have been suggested. A medieval rabbit hutch in Dorset. A building supply store in Alberta. A dentist's office made of shipping containers in Valdez Alaska. One of these might be correct. But I would not bet on it. So the malicious cousins have turned to that most subtle of weapons, the courts. It has been a close run thing, but recently my Solicitor has prevailed. It took some doing but she was successful in persuading the Bench that a deed that at first glance appears to be made from letters cut out of modern publications is in fact the authentic document signed by Queen Elizabeth (The First) in her own hand.
It was a fine bit of legal effort, accompanied of course by the distribution of considerable largess in the proper places. But it is done, and I now am confident that this will deter The Young Graspers for long enough that I may enjoy my holiday abroad without undue concerns.
------------ Regards the Alberta Canada location for Trowelsworthy Hall, take note of THIS Police say they are considering the fire "suspicious". Gee....ya think? Otteria and Biff's doing I don't doubt in the least.
