Lab sweet lab

The field school is over. Like most digs it is changed, not ended, as there is a load of cataloguing and then, God help someone, analyzing to do. A great deal of the (rather small amount of) scholarly analysis I have read seems the way I thought of geometry: they go to a great deal of trouble to state and defend the obvious. I was terrible at geometry and I don't think I have the temperament to enjoy that kind of scholarship. Also as with geometry, however, they can make some fairly solid and impressive edifices I could never begin to build. But I do enjoy walking through, and we need some kind of rationale for me to catalogue the tiny, tiny chert flakes from Maine or the rhyolite flakes from Massachusetts -- all the little points potentially part of a line that leads somewhere interesting.

I like being a non-com: I get to play with the finds and not have to go to graduate school. Unfortunately that lowers the chances of my being paid to do archaeological things even below that of the many anthro majors now working at...the Apple Store, for instance.

Right now I am causing Dick moderate moral neuralgia, as he NEEDS to be in his office and Julia NEEDS hours to fill out her internship and I NEED to get a Real Job and I would much rather finish cataloguing the finds. So I am doing the arduous task of unlocking the lab so Julia can organize the photos and I, incidentally, can get a few more bags catalogued (out of about 1300, total, and 600 still to go. Only maybe 30% of them filled with prehistoric creosote). Dick dislikes feeling like an enabler. I point out that I like feeling needed and can use all the emotional/psychological support I can get. The truth is, I don't want anyone else playing with MY FINDS, not his, no, precious, nasty tricksy archaeologists wants to analyze my pretties and disarrange their numberses, sssss.

Sorry. I mean, I like having a little closure and a warm feeling of consecutive numbers, leaving the artifacts in good shape for the archaeology community, the uncaring disorderly.... no, actually Rich does care and I do want them in a nice computerized database.

If anything exciting happens you will read about it here. I plan to keep going with this blog and try to update it at least every couple of weeks. Something is happening the first week of October involving a historic-era construction trench, and Octoberfest is now scheduled for the second weekend of October.