Event period: 18 and 19 June 2016

  The test pit is officially open. It’s a square, barely half a metre on each side, but what matters is that it’s something discreet that I can work on without attracting too much attention. And I needed that, because there won’t be many tourists at the moment, but the locals do come by, even if it is just for walking the dog, although I was quite lucky, because nobody seemed too interested in what I was doing. In fact, there was even a man who lay down right there to sunbathe a bit and don’t think he said anything to me, as if I wasn’t there.

  Anyway, the important thing: so far nothing much has turned up, not to say nothing at all. On top of that, the area is proving to be more of a nuisance than I thought: it’s falling apart and there’s no way to maintain baulk walls[1] or to excavate in the usual square shape. And if that wasn’t enough, the test pit, which has already reached almost half a metre deep, doesn’t give me any more room to keep putting my arm in to work and, every time I try to stretch it, I end up throwing sand and mud into the pit or knocking down part of the edges of the square I’m working on, which, as you can imagine, only delays everything.

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  In conclusion, I have had to end up extending with an annexed test pit of the same size. Specifically, on the side that goes towards the sea. All this hoping to be able to check whether it was indeed the waves that dragged the pieces found onto the beach. Despite everything, the tide and the weather finally drove me away, and I had to watch sadly as the hole was filled with sand and water in equal parts. How inelegant this job is sometimes; I tell you the truth.

  And so much trouble so that in the end the enlargement wasn’t much of a success either. I only overcame the layer of sandy sediment on the beach and find the next one, more compact and coarser grained, but sandy, after all. Of the peat bog, therefore, there is no trace, and I am beginning to consider the real possibility that it does not exist or that it is further inland from the sea. I don’t know which of the two possibilities complicates the situation more...

  [1] In archaeology, when you excavate, you normally do it in a grid and try to leave baulk walls that can be used later to remember what the stratigraphy of that particular point was like. This is done, as is logical, to carry out a methodical excavation based on scientific criteria of the site.