Training on Saturday for SASSA went very well. Thee were about 20 individuals from a regional Scottish Archaeological club. One happened to be the man who invented tree shelters when he was a graduate student at the Univ. of Aberdeen in the 1960's (Tulle).We met first in a community center to receive an overview of soils an archeology from Donald and then the specifics on SASSA from Clare. Then Clare had set up petrographic scopes for the students to examine thin sections with.
Then we headed out to the field sites we had selected on Friday. The first we visited was the podzol over the fragipan. This was a very large and clear profile that allowed them to see an example of a typical natural soil. This is important for them to see so that they can then compare to an anthropogenic soil. I was impressed with the questions and was able to lead part of discussion on fragipans at this site.
We then travelled to an area where we had varying types of soils on a catena. A well-drained upland soil (podzol) , a wet soil (gley they call it), and a soil in a ruin that was an area of deep soil building. At this last spot we went over the basics of auguring with a dutch auger, field texturing and color. At the gley soil we went over an indicator for reduced iron called alpha-alpha Dipyridyl .I was also able to take a sample of the organic lamallae. We talked quit a bit about this and now believe it is an inverted turf of some kind. It will still be interesting to look at.
We wrapped up near 6PM and the group headed home to meet again Sunday. The three of us headed over to Dingwell to pick up some lunch items for Sunday (cheese, bread, fruit). The we headed back to have dinner. Again we went to the Red Poppy and had a great meal. Afterwards we visited the three local pubs. One was a true local's place and the other two were tour bus pubs where the mean age of the visitors was about 80. Running out of time...more later.
No comments:
Post a Comment