The Diaries
 
November 7th 2008
:: 2008 :: 10/27 - 10/28 - 10/29 - 10/30 - 10/31
11/01 - 11/02 & 11/03 - 11/04 - 11/05- 11/06 - 11/07 - 11/08 & 11/09 - 11/10 - 11/11 - 11/12 - 11/13 - 11/14 - 11/15 - 11/16 - 11/17 - 11/18 - 11/19 - 11/20 - 11/21 - 11/22 - 11/23 - 11/25 - 11/26 - 11/27 - 11/28
11/29 - 11/30
12/01 - 12/02
- Lead poisoning ? -  

Spoons piled up
Photo : Jean-François REBEYROTTE

The morning is again devoted to photography and with topography; it is a question of accumulating the data of all kinds and of drawing an overall plan to connect the discoveries of 2006 and those of this year. We want to also be able to reconstitute stone by stone the small building using help from photo assemblages and of panoramic photographs.

Each person activates feeling however the coming the moment of the disassembling, and with him the disappearance of the extraordinary image which we have in front of us, that of a gesture stopped here 232 years ago, after fifteen years of obstinate fighting to survive.

The wind weakened, the heat settles, and at the beginning of the afternoon even the tarpaulin which covers the building site doesn’t prevent us from suffering.

The moment of disassembling arrives. We start with the corner on the right while entering, where the spoons were piled up. Finally fifteen of them are counted small or large, as three needles and a blade of a knife.

Precise topography of the site
Photo : Laurent HOARAU

At the left is the turn of a large spoon and a fang coming from l’Utile. We then attack the two containers which are in the centre of the room close to the home; a bowl of 20 cm in diameter is quite degraded as a large dish also degraded. The bowl is quickly released and the obviousness appears it is not about tin as their aspect had made us think, but lead. We prepared cardboards furnished with polystyrene flakes to condition them. At the time of releasing the large dish we realize that it is basin lid of 53 cm in diameter and nearly 28 cm in height. Also in lead that we pain to release from the ground where it is inserted and to transport it because the unit is extremely heavy. To be able to clear the basin more easily we withdraw from the site a second iron fang, two large hooks and small one.
A second basin almost identical to the first one (50 cm diameter, 23 cm in height) covered also by a dish, is on the left of the home from where it is easier to release. It is then necessary to withdraw from the home the containers and pans which pile up there, that of the top containing the famous triton. We will not withdraw any less than eight, sometimes firmly built in; the bottom of the lowest is entirely blackened by fire. We will take also two other container posed on the side, one of them is a pan coming with certainty from “l’utile” fixing from the handle is still visible.

Outside, the large basin which is on the right entry posed on a flat stone is emptied with the sediment which it contains, and proves to be also out of lead.
In first analyzes these large containers which cannot by definition go in fire, were undoubtedly intended to contain the water extracted from the fountain. Under these conditions it is undoubtedly necessary to seriously consider a probable intoxication by the lead of the abandoned Madagascans.