Page 89 - Kennemerland VOC ship, 1664 - Published Reports

NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 6.3
Figure 4. Barley husks on barrel staves from Concretion 4. Photo: Zetland County Museum.
water-dredge proved to be of little use on the heavy gravels of this site.
With large areas of significant material, such as organic matte or iron concretion, the objective was always to detach and lift them in large lumps for more leisured examination in the expedition workshop or at the museum. In the case of iron concretion, the judicious use of small explosive charges (generally of 1 or 2 oz) was sometimes found to be the most effective way of achieving this objective, the golden rule always being to place the charge on a rock or similar object on top of the concretion, and never in direct contact with potentially signifi- cant material. Fragile organic items, such as boots or shoes, coils of rope, etc., were care- fully extracted from the deposit together with the material surrounding them, and placed immediately in lidded plastic containers (i.e.
sandwich boxes or ice-cream cartons) and packed in fine sand. They could then be lifted to the surface and transported to the museum without fear of damage. The standard proce- dure with all other artefacts was to place them, either singly or in closely associated groups, in separate polythene bags. The excavator noted the locations of every object or feature observed on a copy of the site plan, and sometimes also inserted a sheet recording such information in the bag along with the finds.
Back in the archaeological workshop, at the end of each day, every bag, box, piece of con- cretion, etc., was given a finds group number, and a catalogue was made against that number of the details of that group’s location, and of every item included in it. As well as this pri- mary record, an additional sheet was made out for all significant finds, assigning them to pre-
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