4th
Wednesday 30th March 2011
This morning we set off, taking a different route to Kom Usim - on what turned out to be a very long and very bumpy road! We arrived by 9am to be greeted by the residents of Kom Usim and our inspector and I set off to confirm the burrima (drill core) locations for today, Saturday and Sunday. Thankfully the landowner we asked about today’s burrima was happy to oblige on a small plot of unplanted land and was then very generous in making tea all day long. In fact we were buzzing from so much sweet tea! We came prepared with a Coolman (the cool box!) full, or what I thought was full, of sandwiches, crisps, fruit and veg - but the sandwiches vanished within about ten minutes flat - so we will have twice the amount on Saturday! the work with the burrima went exceptionally well today and it was very interesting looking at the material coming up because there were a lot of ceramic sherds in the cores and the work progressed smoothly and quickly. It will be interesting to wash these on Saturday after work and look at the fabrics and forms. On Saturday evening we will be joined for a few days by Ashraf el-Senussi from the Faiyum who will be looking at the pottery collected on the ground survey.
Extracting a ‘stuck’ burrima at Kom Usim!
Work slowed down a little just after 1pm, not because of the heat - although it was another warm day - but because the burrima got stuck nearly 4m underground! Thankfully, remembering that chains were the idea extraction device helped much and our photo for today shows how a chain, a piece of rope and two tree trunks can make life very easy!!
