This blog entry goes back to May 16th of this year and was the last one before Blogspot decided to go mean on me which led to a month's sabbatical from my entries.
Students arrived Monday, for three days of work. Most of the water was pumped out of the tanks, leaving a three-foot layer of mostly rotted leaves and muck that had combined to preserve the artifacts extremely well.
For the students, it was kind of a treasure hunt as they did not know what they would be pulling up next.
There were a lot of British-made Enfield rifles, many of which were fused together in bundles that had taken the shape of the box they had been shipped in. Then, there was tableware, ebony-handled Bowie knives, remnants of scabbards, bayonets, cinderblock-sized stacks of tin sheets, axe heads and chisels.
The artifacts were processed assembly-line style. First, they were hosed off at a grilled table set up on saw horses. Then, they were taken to another table covered with white plastic where they were tagged, photographed and logged into a laptop.
Lastly, they were placed in tanks of clean water in a nearby building.
Hopefully, it won't be another fifty years before they're examined again.
As I Said Before, I Sure Would Have Like to Have Been On This Project. --Old B-Runner
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