Monday. Another day on the dig site. Another early morning. It was a good day. For some reason, the last two days haven't been as tiring as some of the previous ones. Either I'm not working as hard, or I'm starting to become numb to it!
The first order of business today was to move a huge pile of massive rocks that one square had uncovered and pile in the street. All able hands were supposed to show up with all the wheel barrows that we had in the site. I wasn't sure that I really qualified as "able hands" since I'm probably our team's most useless lifter. But, I didn't want to be accused of being a slacker, and I thought there might be something that I could do and so I went to help. Well, the most logical job for someone who isn't a great lifter is to drive the wheelbarrow. So, I tried. The first load was so heavy that I could hardly lift it to push. I set it down to get a better grip and someone else took it away from me. Guess they figured I couldn't do it. The second time, there were fewer rocks in the load, so I thought I could manage...But I tipped the wheelbarrow over before I'd hardly started and the rock had to be re-lifted in...Oops! I thought my wheelbarrow driving days were over and so I helped balance a few loads instead. But, somehow I managed to end up behind the wheel again. This time, Jess helped me balance the load and I managed to get it all the way to the dump site. That gave me a little boost in confidence. The next load I was able to muscle all by myself. Hooray! I even did one more with only a little help over the most massive bump in the road. Maybe I'm not such a useless lifter, after all!
Our team took on a little different shape, today. We said goodbye to Andy and Katie. They went off to help with the "A-Team," a group excavating a couple of squares in the "A" row. But, we inherited a veteran wall-finder to help us locate the face of our most tricky wall. Hooray for Jim! We continued to move bucket after bucket of dirt, carefully scraping here and not-so-carefully pick-axing there. I was assigned to dig in a tiny alley way between the "elusive wall" which Quin named "Harry" and another wall which thus far is nameless. I managed to locate what I think is Harry's face...a little beat up at this point. I guess an earthquake and a thousand years or more will do that to you!
The whole "Name that wall" thing began yesterday, when Quin worked all day to discover the inside face of one of our walls. He affectionately named it "Sally." So, since Sally forms a corner with another wall, he thought that other wall should be named "Harry" so the corner could be "Where Harry Met Sally." In Quin's defense, we have been working in the sun a long time! Now our other wall needed a name. Since he was out of good ideas, the other wall became "Wally." The problem is, we found another wall parallel to Wally, with only about 10-20cm between them. Highly weird. Why would someone build walls so close together? We needed another name. The team next to us suggested that we name the new wall "Wallita."
Our team debated all day about the exact purpose of Wallita...some suggested a walk-in closet for a very skinny person. Some suggested they planned extra defense in that spot because they knew that an attack would come in that exact place. I suggested that it was a Byzantine torture chamber...there are after all, no doors into that place that have yet been discovered. What better way to torture someone than to sandwich them between two walls with no way out? Dr. Schuler suggested a more practical reason. It could be that the room needed to be just a bit smaller so that it could be easily roofed. Thus another wall was built inside the room to make it a little bit smaller. We may never know the exact purpose behind this strange construction. Maybe tomorrow's digging will shed some more light on Sally, Harry, Wally and Wallita.
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