Fossils of Oviedo

Phew!  Who ever thought retirement would be so busy!

  Once we were settled in to our new life in Oviedo, I had planned to get back to several large writing projects (an etymological sociology of mechanics I started in 2004, and a study of images of reading in art I have been puttering with for a few years), as well beginning to put some order into the 200+ pounds of old photographs and archives we shipped over.

  But then there is so much to do here--and so many excuses to keep one from sitting down and doing some serious writing.  Not only are there the treasures to be explored in the art museum, the archaeological museum, and the cathedral museum (all within a few minutes walk from our apartment), or haunting the shelves of the nearby city municipal library or the slightly more distant library of the Humanities campus of the Universidad de Oviedo (both of which gave us borrowing cards!), but there is also the simple pleasure of wandering around this delightful small city with its wonderfully varied architecture.

  But lately I have been looking down as much as up!  Everywhere one looks there are paving slabs and building façades made from fossiliferous stone.  Fascinating.

  I have just started to make a photographic collection of these, and I have only begun to do nay research on the topic.  (I will eventually have to make my way over to the Geology Department at the university.)  As far as I can guess, the ubiquitous spiral fossils, which usually appear in a light brown limestone, are a variety of nerinea from the early Cretaceous.  But, as I said, I am just starting this.

  Here are some samples: