After the first week of preparing and organizing we were ready to start digging and sieving! A labeling system for all the quadrants and layers was established and bags started piling up at the sieving station, all waiting to be sieved through the very fine mesh.
Small mammals
In the upper layers we have been finding beautiful bones of a diversity of small mammals. Lots of little vertebra, tail bones, jaws of different sizes with and without little teeth, and even some skulls. One room in our house has been dedicated to being the bone room, and here Marius and Aurélie have been drying everything carefully before they are placed in the fridge. It will be exciting to get these identified next month!
Stones and more stones
Today the pace was increased because we want to get down to the “Ursus horizon” - the layer that has previouslybeen dated to the Eemian and that we know contains bones. More people digging and labeling resulted in a steady flow of buckets to the sieving station. Close to 100 buckets of primarily sterile layers - we washed a lot of beautiful stones. We made great progress, but we still have a few more meters to go. Now everyone is tired, but before we crash we'll try to find the local pub that apparently exists!