Portraits

Max & Janna

Ambermommy!!

CU2 Crew

Our Humble Excavation Site

Video #3

The Raw and The Uncooked

Here are rest of the videos from Saturday. It looks like I will have to upload them one at a time so I will just # the clips rather than give them fancy titles. All the footage is unedited, so watch out because I have been known to curse like a sailor and I'm the narrator. I hope these videos enhance the blog experience for the participants and others who may view this site.

I'm not much of a blogger myself and because I am so new to archeological field work I find that I have less to say than some of the more experienced students and bloggers. I frankly don't know WTF I am doing on the site it is all a learning experience for me. Because of this I don't feel there is that much I can say that hasn't been said more eloquently by a classmate. These videos are one way of adding my observations to the blog. I totally encourage any of you to grab the other camera next time and randomly film what you see.

As some of you know my interest lies in documenting and cataloging materials rather than looking for them, hence my move towards museum studies in my next graduate program. I feel I will make a better lab worker than a field worker in terms of archeology.

That being said I am enjoying the work and being outdoors it beats a lecture hall any day of the week with the kind of weather we have in the Bay Area this time of year. : )

Just a photo of my partners in crime....

Lab lab blab bla blog

As ALL of you should know by now, we have started to process materials from DSCQHSR in the lab facilities on campus. Now I want to warn some of you: before you get your hopes up about chem tables, lab coats, fancy machines that go *ping* and closets full of materials at our disposal, this is an archaeology lab. Which means it is a facility located in the least desirable place on campus (a basement) and is slightly larger than a maintenance closet. It could be worse: I've worked in a lab that was converted from a bovine invitro fertilization clinic. No joke. Count your blessings.

After the coordinated efforts of Richie, Charles and myself, and the wisdom of Margie, we managed to clear space, and muster up trays and washing utensils to process our finds. There was some talk of 'letting Dr. Miller' know what we were up to, but I chuckle to myself about him wandering in and finding unknown artifacts in the cage and being reminded that yes, indeed, there is an archaeology field school offered through the department this spring. Surprise!

The lab experience is favored by some students of archaeology: it is here you get a clear look at what is being recovered in the field. As time goes on, and as we become more judicious in what we bag from our screens, we will see less rocks and more 'artifacts' in the lab. Remember: archaeologists are only interested in modified or manufactured materials, we aren't interested in rocks unless they're modified or part of a structure. Item 2 to remember: if you bag it in the field, it still needs to be processed in the lab. Save yourself the time down the line and determine whether something is worth saving in the field. If you're not sure, always ask one of the crew chiefs, but by now everyone should be pretty familiar with the cultural materials we are concerned with documenting and saving, as well as the size of certain materials like Tile (if it is smaller than a quarter, don't bother). Rocks: if they're not smooth, shouldered or rounded, chuck 'em. Pretty rocks are indeed pretty, but not useful to us archaeologically.

We plan to hold lab hours next Wednesday and Friday, and we need to get started documenting these materials and constructing a database to quantify this data for our final reports! David B. has provided artifact labels and a spreadsheet template for data entry. This Wednesday, 25 May, I will have students continue with washing artifacts, and begin creating labels and entering data for our site surface finds and individual units. Busy week ahead!

matrix change: Keanu Reeves not included.....

Star Date -311615.4109271943 (21 May 2011)

No one was raptured from job site today. *Whew*

We broke ground 3 weeks ago (finally!) and most of the students seem pretty happy about jumping in and getting dirty. Everyone is being rotated amongst the units on a weekly basis, with the exception of the crew chiefs and assistants, giving everyone an opportunity to experience different excavation strategies and artifact finds. Two of the units in the southern portion of our excavation area (CU3 and Trench 1) have yielded materials associated with California prehistory, though with the amount of bioturbation in this area, stratigraphically placing these materials is impossible. For example, within minutes of T1's discovery of an unfinished obsidian projectile point (roughly the size of a thumbnail) I discovered an obsidian tertiary flake on the ground surface adjacent to CU3. Gophers might be fuzzy and 'cute', but they can really foul up an archaeologists job, not to mention a vegetable garden.

Last week was a good bead week: within almost 20 minutes of wet screening materials there were 3 recovered in the screens and one recovered in my unit (*that I am aware of). The two specimens from my unit are both white, one is glass but the other has a seed or shell like opaqueness. Unfortunately, I did not have my jewelers loop on hand to look at it more closely.

The excavation pace in CU4, the unit I have been assigned too, increased over the second half of day 3. After relinquishing paperwork duty to Jaime, and borrowing Dani from T1, Mark and I jumped in and blew through Level 3 in just over an hour. We couldn't have accomplished this without the screening efficiency Dani and Tung. Those two rocked the wet screens enabling Mark and I to dig like steam shovels. Periodic trips to the screens to dump dirt also allowed me to get my jeans soaked and dirty, which not only refreshed me on the hot day, but also aided in the sense of accomplishment. There is no such thing as a clean archaeologist. *note: If you see one, especially if they're wearing clean white clothes, approach with caution armed with a BS meter. Ergo, if you meet one who doesn't have a twisted sense of humor, run.

The next excavation day will be June 3rd. We plan to divide our unit in half, reducing the size from 2m x 1m to a 1m x 1m unit. We are also shifting our arbitrary levels from 10cm increments to 20 cm increments in order to increase efficiency and enable us to determine an accurate stratigraphic profile of our unit. After blowing through an asphalt slurry layer at 5-25 cm, we have encountered really thick pliable clay soil. While it is relatively easy to remove, its consistency makes screening difficult, though not impossible.

Looking forward to returning to the site in two weeks!

Site Walk Up

When I have some time after work I will post the other videos. Keep in mind I have borrowed two Flip Cams from campus if anyone else wants to video stuff from the next excavation or lab session let me know.