Traversar VII – dodging the clouds

Tuesday evening and I am staring out at the clouds that are slowly filling the valley top to bottom again. It has been a bit of a fight with the weather so far. We had a good day on monday, though. At least archaeologically. Our hunting grounds were a side valley of the Val Medels, which culminates at the Lukmanierpass. A lake high up at the end of this valley caught our attention. Such lakes have long been of interest to shepherds and especially to Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. We were lucky enough to survey its shores in sunny weather, but weren’t lucky enough to find any archaeological remains there.

Lai Blau, 2448 masl, looking towards the Lukmanierpass.

After a picknick lunch we turned our attention to the valley flanks where our deskbased work, esp. with old maps and arial photos, had shown we should expect the remains of huts and animal pens. It quickly became clear we were right. However, the weather turned, but we stuck it out in the rain and recorded a number of transhumance related building remains. We even located a potential hearth of these elusive hunter-gatherers underneath a rockshelter. When people used this probable hearth we will only know once we have dated the charcoal samples we took.
Today we dodged the clouds, as it turned out to be an office day. With the low clouds and at times heavy rain it would have been impossible to do any useful surveying. But our documentation is finished to perfection now and we got to enjoy the sights of Disentis/Mustér, where we are based.

Traversar VI – a day in the clouds

A day in the clouds. Now that might sound rather romantic and such a day does give you very dramatic views. Sadly, however, it is also rather wet and it limits your view, not very handy when doing archaeological survey work. It is hard to orientate yourself in such conditions and it isn’t easy to get a good impression of the landscape and how it might have been used by people in the past.
We were in the Oberalppass region today. Definitely a region with high archaeological potential. There seem to be many remains of past transhumance activity. These probably date to medieval or post-medieval times. What was a little more surprising were the remains of buildings and other structures which might have military origins. We expect at least some of these might be related to fortifications from WWI. That would be quite exciting, as such remains are not as well recorded as one might expect.

With the imminent building activity for the connection of the Andermatt and Sedrun ski areas, it is important any archaeological remains are located, so they can be studied before construction work starts.

 

Alpine archaeologist in action. Photographing medieval/post-medieval building remains. Above the Oberalppass, Switzerland.

And a few more nice photos from one of my colleagues:

Lead bullet. Above the Oberalppass, Switzerland.

That’s it for today. I promised to make potato-salad and people are getting hungry!

P.S. These photos are all made with mobile phone cameras. We only have internet access over our phones, which is how I write these posts as well.