Today we spent another day at the Kelheim Museum, Pete reviewing the pottery from the Late Iron Age (about 100 BC), and me looking at selected pottery sherds and trying to identify colors as best I could from a series of color cards (Munsell color). Although I have a pretty good eye for color, it's amazingly difficult to match colors on paper to color on pottery. It was really interesting - there were times when I could easily make the connection, and other times when there was just nothing EXACTLY right! But, I hope that what I could do was useful. The pottery is so interesting - and very beautiful in many ways. During this time there were no glazes, but some (very little) of it was "painted." I'm not sure what the "paint" was - it may have been a slip of another kind of clay or it might have been some kind of plant pigment made into a "paint." In addition to color from paint, there are also color changes from firing - firing at the time of manufacture, or possibly when the vessel was put into the fire later for cooking, or something. This is all MY conjecture - I haven't asked Peter, because I know he wouldn't want me to present something that is his professional view (like I can't post any pictures of the sherds with the color cards I used.....sorry....or any pictures of The Professor!!) Anyway, in addition to the color variations, the pot sherds have incised lines of various kinds - really quite delightful and charming.
So, anyway, we've been getting up about 6 in the morning, breakfasting about 6:45, and then about 7:45 driving off to Kelheim for our day's "work." Mostly, I've been reading a novel on my Kindle (Sharon Penfield's "The Sunne in Splendor" - a terrific historical novel about the War of the Roses), then looking at pottery sherds and recording color variations, while Peter does whatever he does with the pottery. Haven't a CLUE what that is!!! About noon we break for lunch, walk over to a little bakery and get buns and salad to eat (at stand-up tables, which I'm sure Nat and Kitty will remember from their visits to Germany), go for a walk for about half and hour (Nick and Chris will recall this), then get coffee (for P) and tea (for me), and go back to the museum office for a few more hours of "work." Then, about 3:30 or so, we break for the day, straighten up our work area, and drive back to Regenburg (where we are now), and Peter takes a nap while I write this blog. Now we are going to go out and get some dinner. Like Nat's grandparents, we buy our beer and wine in the grocery store, and don't buy it at the restaurant, so we actually don't have very big dinner bills.
