I have missed all but this message on this issue and
          therefore may be totally off the mark, if so forgive me.
          If one were to believe your barrel is truely a tanning vat,
          wouldn't there be other artifacts at the site to support the
          theory?  If so, then the tanning vat issue would be
          supported by those items.  About the fish, I am not sure of
          the total story and therefore only venture a guess that they
          might have been trapped in a small pool, possibly during
          mating or frigthened by some other creature, once in the
          pool were unable to get out.  As before, this is just a
          guess on my part as I have miss most of this issue, would
          love to know more.
 
          Would love to know more about tomb 5 in egypt, last I heard
          was that there were many findings which had not been
          expected with thousands of items which could take 10 year to
          list.  As the researchers have only made their way into the
          earliest portion of the tomb, it would be intereting to know
          what has already been found, I'd invited anyone with info on
          this subject to forward it for all.
 
          FM
Thanks for the continuing discussion on possible uses for the buried barrel
feature at 13JN152. The barrel is estimated to be 2.5-3 m in diameter, so I
am also wondering if that isn't rather large for a privy. We have leaned
towards the cistern theory but did not find any structural remains in our
limited Phase II testing. Any ideas on whether it might be a tanning vat?
Also, I'd appreciate further discussion on what our large assemblage of
fishbone (suckers) is doing at our other site east of 13JN152. The fish may
represent a single spawning episode based on uniformity of size etc.
 
 
Thanks again for all the great discussion.
 
 
Susan Snow
Office of the State Archaeologist
University of Iowa
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