Well, it has all been go go go the past couple of days as we kicked off with some quite hardcore intertdial archaeology with a fair bit of geoarch so boy, am I happy! After our recce on Sunday, we decided that the fish traps, for a number of good reasons including socio-economic, cultural and demographical as well as archaeological, could prove an extremely interesting set of features to focus our attention on. There are quite literally hundreds of these things across the foreshore of Qatar, they have not been dated and by and large (although there are exceptions), they have fallen into disuse. They vary considerably morphologically and the have been constructed in an extremely methodical manner. The aggregate is limestone which appears to have collected from the beaches and not quarried.
What we decided to do, in brief, was attempt to define the stratigraphy within the traps and at the periphery, and the method of constructionl, we also hoped to define the geophysical signature using magnetometry. We are hoping to find buried ones in the Sabkha (saltmarsh) as there are a number of former estuaries along te west coast. This would be followed by a systematic survey of the fish traps in a given stretch of coast to further support the evidence from the two fish traps we planned to excavate and plan.
Due to the tides, we have not managed to complete this venture at this time. Paul was keen to press on but the tidal frame thwarted our best efforts, it is possibly the worst time to be out there. The tidal regime here is quite peculiar, the fisrt low tide is lower than the following one, ie it is asymmetric which means the area uncovered by the first tide is greater than that by the second but the same tide the following day drops again. We have managed to open two trenches, one to establish the internal stratigraphy, the second to determine the stratigraphy associated with the wall itself. The first is closed, work on the second requires completion. We have done some Geophys and also started the survey. Today, the tide is so restrictive, it isn't worth going out and we are doing PX on what we have already. We have also been working split shifts, 05.30-10.30 then 12.00-17.00 on Tuesday, and 05.00-09.30 then 13.00-17.00 yesterday, it is really, really tiring. We obviously have quite a long break, I managed to sleep yesterday but not today.
Next week, we aim to finish the fish traps off. I also have to go down to Doha to finish some environmental samples off and we have a few further sites up here to start looking at, several associated with the Palaeolithic site.
On a personal level, the last few days have been interesting. We go down to the guys digging at the fort in Zubara occassionally and have a chat with them, we are off to their end of excavation party tonight, hopefully the Craic will be mighty! We also have a minor trauma with the tyres on one of the vehicles which made for a REALLY long day on Monday.
Food wise, it is not good up here, there is the Hinese which I think I have already mentioned which is a rank blend of Chinese and Indian, they reckon Arabic as well but I am at a loss to see the Arabic influence. I had the first decent meal I have had from there last night, a mutton shawarma (mutton kebab) which I shared with James our Cameraman and some veggie rice, this was OK. We eat in most nights, the fish from the fish market is excellent, however my current favourite 'hamour' or Tawina Grouper is currently as overfished as cod which is closely resembles.
We are currently waiting for the bloody cleaners to finish cleaning Team Llanbedd's flat's ... Procrastinantion on previously unseen levels currently appears to be occurring. We should be out of here soon, hopefully, bukra Inshallah. I am currently attempting to learning arabic, my favourite phrase is mish mishkallah
- 1st to guess what that means gets a fruit juice.
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