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 [log in to unmask]