Week IV

After starting the fourth week off with the "Gabiine flu", I entered my first day of Finds School. The Finds School allows a handful of volunteers to take a break from excavation and become more intensely educated about the ceramics and other finds from site.

Each day, finds director Dr. Laura Banducci would teach the school about a given ceramic classification in chronological order from impasto to African Cookware. We were encouraged to ask questions and use resources around us in order to spot date SUs, amongst other things. We would draw vessels based on diagnostic sherds and compare them to published resources of the same typology on a daily basis. I learned that the proper orientation of rims and bases affected my drawing to a significant extent; as a result, the completed drawing affected my own judgement of comparative vessel typology.

Two Finds School students sorting and dating potsherds for a Gabii publication.

After our daily instruction, Dr. Banducci encouraged us to explore the special finds from Gabii that have been recorded over the course of the past seven years. "Explore" qualifies as opening bags and handling the objects found, including coins, bone objects, glass fragments, and miniature vessels, to name a few. As a biologist and archaeologist, I leapt at the chance to examine objects from animal bone and ivory more closely. Once we had settled on a category of objects, the finds students set out to create a catalogue of our objects at Gabii as well as research them in a greater context. I decided to research the bone pins and needles found in Gabii's Area F.

Throughout the week I felt like I either improved or acquired a new, useful archaeological skill every single day. One day we searched a catalogue of terra sigilata comparanda and made joins within African Red Slip wares in order to estimate a minimum and maximum number of vessels the next. While I have taken a course at Michigan revolving around ceramic analysis, evaluating actual wares from archaeological contexts made me feel like I was contributing to the project as a whole, not just to my own knowledge bank. Upon logging my spot dates and drawings, any academic with access to our database might be able to use my data in publications.

Dr. Banducci helping two students modify entries to the database.

While volunteers and staff members alike might be able to tell you whether they prefer working in the field or in finds, I have no such answer. Before joining the Finds School, I felt torn between wanting to work in the fields and wanting to work in finds. Unfortunately, my time in the Finds School has only widened the gap. In either area, the more I learn the more I am emotionally and academically invested in my given projects. By the end of the season, I hope to find my place on site in the field, finds, or something else entirely.