Digging 31: Overview

An amazing day; I was able to go up onto the roof of Edinburgh University Old College to photograph the whole site.
Firstly, apologies that I forgot to change the settings of the camera from 1600 ISO, so this one's very grainy :( It was one of the best views, though, so I went with it....
If anyone's been following my "Digging" blips, (all tagged "Archaeology", I think) here's almost the whole site looking towards the West.
View large!

The square in top-centre is the base of a fountain (early 20th century) and of the two dark lines on either side, the right-hand one is a stone lined drain (a "cundy", probably 18th Century). The left-hand one is a mirror image that was never made into a drain, it's just a trench, no more than 10 cm deep. The other faint lines, parallel to these are modern drains and water-pipes, etc.

By the far left-hand steps are two trenches that we dug to try to find the remains of the Kirk o' Field. It is there (all the masonry dug out for re-use) but it's not very clear in this photo.
In front of the far right-hand stairs (also beyond them, out of shot) are the remains of the basement levels, drainage etc of the 16th century Hamilton House (later taken over by the University for the chemistry building in the 18th century). That's where we found traces of mercury compounds, so we're not allowed to finish digging there :(
In front of that, under the far side of the green screening, is a huge infilled trench for air-conditioning conduits, with one of our spoil-heaps at the left-hand end.

Within the fencing is my little kingdom of the surviving part of the graveyard. The different orientations of the graves are from different eras of use of the cemetery. The E-W graves (facing directly towards the camera) are the earliest. Carmen, at the right, is lifting SK22, the grave I blipped yesterday is just to the left of her, and Leigh's working beyond that. In the bottom left of the "cage" is Emma, trying to sort out three superimposed graves....

The guys next to her at the foot of the steps are trowelling back that area, as we expect more graves there (gulp!). In fact, Martin, near the bucket, is digging a newly discovered grave.
All the wall foundations in the foreground are from the library building of what was known as the New College in 1617. The very thick walls (also to be seen in the "L"-shaped trench on the right) are from the original library (including the cosy room that I blipped a couple of days ago), the thinner walls to the West (including the curved base of a spiral stair) were added as an extension about 60 years afterwards.
OK, that's the very longwinded site tour ;)
Also, M asked me to point out that, contrary to yesterday's text, I don't always cook, I usually just eat her delicious meals :P