Pottery and Salt

It's the end of day 3 out at the dig. I've gotten pretty good at washing pottery shards and sorting them. There are hundreds of pounds of these, many only the size of a dime. All have to washed by hand with a scrub brush or toothbrush in water. It's repetitive, but kinda contemplative, too. There are also occasionally whole pots, or nearly whole pots. Yesterday I got to sponge one clean that actually had painted designs on it. It was about the size of a mango. Today I was just doing fragments, separating out pieces that had interesting features, especially rims. There are dozens of 50 lb rice bags full of such, each labelled as to which pit and which depth it came from. For most of these little sherds, all they will do is weigh the total mass (once cleaned of dirt) and the interesting/rim fragments from that same location. There are standard ratios of rim to general fragments. If the ratio in a given lot falls outside those ratios--either more rims or fewer than standard--it suggests that they should analyze that site further, because something unusual may be underway.

Most of what I washed today came from a pit near the edge of the mound where there seems to be some evidence of water systems, and perhaps some early industry. This is just one of three pits that are currently being dug. I took a turn doing some digging yesterday, and it raised my respect for the expertise it takes to see and feel and hear a difference in the texture of the soil, which is most of what you look for to find what is then called a 'feature.' Once found, features require careful digging, mapping, and analysis. This year some 20 villagers are hired to help dig--it has been as many as 40 in the past, when they did the huge pit out of which came some 660 burials--and they make it look easy. You take down a floor by 10 cm at a time, unless you find a feature of some kind. The Thai villagers can eyeball 10 cm exactly and quickly take up that much soil leaving a perfectly flat floor. Impressive!

I did have to wonder what they made of a farang (foreigner) like me coming half way around the world and paying for the privilege of digging in their dirt. Since I also didn't feel like I knew what I was doing, I felt awkward. There are other members of the volunteer team who have studied archaeology and so have experience with troweling and they tell me that they too are unsure moment to moment so maybe this is just how it is. So, while I'll certainly do some more digging before the two weeks are up, I may choose mostly to do other things where I'm sure my labor is genuinely helpful.

We also did a quick side trip today. We saw the ruins of one of the 'hospitals' --which weren't medical facilities, but places of hospitality for travelers, like inns or hostels--built along one of the roads stretching from Angkor Wat out this direction, under the reign of Jayarvarman VII. He's the Khmer king who built Angkor Thom and the Bayon (the temple with all the faces) and Ta Prohm (the temple which has huge trees growing over it) , shifted the Khmer religion to Buddhism from Hinduism, etc. The famous sculpture of a smiling head is thought to be his portrait.

We also saw how the local villagers extract salt from the soil now in the dry season. There are patches where salt comes up to the surface from underground deposits as the rice paddys dry out. Using local clay, they dig a pit about 4' square and 3' deep, line it with clay, and then line one side of it further with reeds and burlap bags. On that side, they dig a neighboring hole, about a foot in diameter but deeper, and then connect the two at the bottom of the shallower pit with a bamboo tube. They shovel in salt-laden dirt, and then pour water in on top of it. It filters into the smaller hole, where they can collect the briny water, which has salt in it, but no other impurities. They make a small float out of a particular tree resin, and when this floats on the water that's come through the filter, they know it has enough salt in it to warrant boiling down. The salt that crystallizes on the side of the boiling pan is bitter and used as a stomach remedy, but what's in the bottom of the pot can be bagged and sold. It's quite an operation, but requires essentially no capital--just skill and knowhow. It's a good moneymaker when they can't be growing rice.

No promises but I'll see if I can post some pictures soon!

Karen