Tollense field school - Part 6
Weblog
During the first two weeks of August 2022, students from Leiden University, University of Rostock and University of Göttingen have joined the Tollense Field school to research an archaeological site in the Tollense Valley in northern Germany. The Cultural Heritage Agency participates in this field school to support capacity-building of a younger generation maritime archaeologists and to facilitate international knowledge exchange. In these series of blogs, students and partners tell about their experiences. Read more about the international field school and the Tollense valley in the first weblog. In this edition, students Robin Jonker and Joelle Stephanie Eversdijk explain how they excavated the dug out.
One of the main targets for the underwater team was to investigate the dugout. Most importantly, it had to be lifted and moved as it was deteriorating in the current location. The past days, we tried to document the dugout at its original location underwater, by taking measurements to make an accurate drawing, and photos for photogrammetry.
However, the full length of the dugout was not clearly established yet, so the prime focus of today was to find the end of the dugout that extends into the riverbank. The first technique we used was sounding sticks. The theory is, if you poke these sticks into the ground you can feel the wood you are looking for. When we used this method we believed that the dugout was located approximately 2 meters into the riverbank. To establish the certainty of our sound method techniques, we dug a trial trench.
The result of this was that the dugout was not located as far into the riverbank as we first believed. Instead, there were a lot of intertwined reeds at that location, and the sounding stick method hit ‘something’ around the same depth. Subsequently, we decided the next course of action was to just follow the outline of the dugout from the river and into the riverbank. While digging into the riverbed underwater, we finally found the end of the dugout. Some land excavation was needed to skim soil of the edge of the riverbank, but the full length of the dugout was now established.
In the second week, we started to clear out the area around the dugout. We finally knew how far the dugout reached in both directions, so it was time to expose it. Again, we used the water dredge and vacuum cleaner to suck up the sediment around and in the dugout. While the dugout slowly became more exposed, more details could be seen. For instance, we found multiple holes in the front of the ship, most likely for tying ropes. At the end of the day, most of the dugout was completely exposed.
The next step will be lifting the dugout to document it and later to redeposit it in a safer place in the river.