Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Mechanical bore holes

As we near the end of survey operations at Gabii, on the basis of data collected from manual core sampling this summer, we elected to carry out several mechanical bore holes in order to sample a larger range of stratigraphiic deposits and, hopefully, ascertain the depth of the bedrock for several loci on the site. The positioning of the mechanical bore holes was determined on the basis of manual samples that showed promise in terms of preserved stratigraphy and/or anthropic inclusions. By distributing the coverage of these mechanical samples across the intramural area of Gabii, we hope to be able to ascertain something of an idea about the nature of the archaeological deposits in various areas of interest. Once the data from both sets of bore holes has been compiled, we will be able to construct a site profile for Gabii and thus be better able to target the placement of our first trenches in 2009.