DP40 End Of Week One
by profschuler
on Sketchfab

Note the bench appearing against the south wall.

During her last day as a volunteer, Melissa Wolf discovered several storage jars in broken form. Her “pot” problem…can they be reassembled? We will let her know what the ceramics expert thinks is possible.  But her discovery already shows that the space she was excavating was occupied during its final stages.

One of the less “fun” things on a dig is pottery washing . . . hundreds of shards encrusted with dirt and plaster that must be individually scrubbed. But, as Anna Dauffenbach discovered, sometimes that scrubbing reveals something . . . blessed. This is a shard of a bowl upon which the potter had stamped a cross. Perhaps from other shards we will be able to reconstruct (at least in part) the bowl containing this stamp. Of greater import is the link it creates between the Christian digger today and one of her ancestors in the faith, who shared with her a faith in the crucified one.  As the liturgy declares, “Together with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven…”

New software allows the production of 3D models from a series of photographs. We hope to create models for each square for each day of the dig.  Viewers will then be able to trace our progress through the process of excavation to its final result.  Here is a sample of DP40 after three days of work:

 

DP40
by profschuler
on Sketchfab

Unfortunately, it takes about two hours to produce each model. So the final library of models will not be available until after the dig.