The Diaries
 
October 30th 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
- Assumption -  

Drawing of Sylvain on projection of the day before
Photo : Max GUEROUT

In the morning we are received by a drawing of Sylvain Savoia, evoking projection, yesterday after the dinner, of the film turned during the 2006 campaign by Sudel Fuma.

At the “briefing”, we give a description of yesterday’s discoveries. The fact of finding human remainders in a cut level indicates that a burial was disturbed by work of digging of the foundations of the neighbouring buildings.
We find it difficult to understand how this incident could occur without leaving traces in the memory of the meteorologists. Thus the remainders of our shipwrecked men, with a great probability, were disturbed by their Malagasy “cousins”, who came to build the weather station.
We imagine the gesture of the digger and let us deduct from it that this burial is probably in no more than three or four meters of the place where the human remainders were found. That absolutely modifies our first analysis which located the burials at a certain distance from the habitat. It is therefore going to be necessary to reconsider our strategy of initial excavation.

But before taking this step towards the south, and whatever our impatience, it is necessary to finish the study of the zone of which we began the excavation.

Copper handmade container
Photo : Max GUEROUT

With precaution, we remove the white layer of sand which covers the archaeological layer, and which constitutes for us the proof that no disturbance came to modify the layer of sediment which is underneath it. Prudently, having swapped shovels for the small-handling brush, the diggers progress more slowly.
The upper level of the archaeological ground appears, marked by the presence of fragments of turtles’ bone and, as in 2006, by a small copper container put upside down on the ground, in a gesture undoubtedly stopped by the arrival of the rescuers.

The ground is squared in squares of one side meter; the sediment is taken layer by layer and is filtered to extract the remainders from them from consumed fauna: bone of birds, bone of turtles’, shells, part of fishes. If these last are very few, the discovery of a hook comes to confirm the practice of fishing and the method used.

Lastly, we benefit from an internet connection to send via Polynesia, a research opinion concerning the bottle found yesterday.