April 01 2012: Valentina Gasperini
This evening is my turn to write the diary: I am one of the new members of the team, I am Italian and I work as a post-doc at Bologna University. I spent the last few months in Liverpool, studying the imported pottery from Gurob and this is the reason why I am here.
After six seasons digging in a Fayyumic Greco-Roman site with my University, I had finally the chance to work here in Gurob as a ceramicist. I have constructed a corpus of all the known pottery found at Gurob from 2005 to 2011 seasons, I based my work on the drawings and the descriptions of Ashraf el-Senussi and Virpi Perunka.
From the work that has been done here in the last years, I introduced a new method of processing the pottery on the field and to record it, after the field work, in a database, in which it is possible to find both the new diagnostic sherds and the general description of their finding contexts.
Working in close collaboration with Sarah and Nina, we started processing the first pottery unearthed during this season. We have set up square IA1 (the kiln’s area, already partly excavated in 2010). After the first records related to the surface pottery collection, we are now analyzing the pottery coming from the lower contexts.
We will keep you posted about the final results, but…So far so good!!