Field School IV, July 17 and 18

Monday, July 17, 2006

Beginning the second week. The only trouble is I feel like my time on the dig is almost over and I don't want to go home. Despite the humidity and the sore feet and the truly annoying blackflies (which keep away as long as you're walking, and pretty much away from the cabin porch, thank God), I like the lifestyle. Particularly when there's a supply of tasty leftovers at hand, and people to play with and lend kayaks and spot the moose. The local moose came out of the woods this morning; Will was sitting on the porch while I made my lunch. He spoke to me and we watched Brook, who goes running, see the moose and stop. I was about to take a picture when the moose saw Brook and went back into the woods. The mutual body language was quite funny.

The hottest day so far. Not too humid, very bright, and today we started doing 1-by-1 meter squares; the level increment is 5 cm, instead of 10, as it is in shovel test pits. This means the work goes infinitely slower, while boosting the odds of finding any small things that might be there. The soil, once you're below about 20 cm, is very sandy and relatively root-free. It goes through even the 1/8” screens very fast. We are leaving the area right around the spot Edna found until the last couple weeks of field school. The squares we're opening are based around some of the test pits with the more interesting stratigraphy, so they are really L-shaped, around a previously dug northeast corner. Getting people who had previously been becoming more-or-less competent at the shovel test pits to switch gears and learn to trowel has not been altogether easy. The heat is doing a real job on people's energy levels and, no less, their brains. And today, my temper.

It has also become evident that the two new laser-level targets are broken, giving a kind of ‘alternate reading’ which is very confusing, as well as one we assume is right. This is slowing us down, since we use the level to see how far down we have trowelled and whether it is time to start another piece of paper. You have to wait for other people to do their five readings (corners and centers) before it’s your turn.

Unfortunately there are _no_ finds, zero, nada, not even any more charcoal as yet. This is disappointing. On the one hand, Dick says, it's interesting and significant to find a Paleo site on a river. On the other, it is apparently quite a small site, not going to make the National Register of Historic Places, and utterly remarkable that Edna happened on it. We are still high enough in most of the one-bys that we may yet find something there; and most important, the heat is supposed to break after a storm tonight or tomorrow.

I believe this was the evening I finally got it together to demand Linda let me play with her camera. Linda worked with another New England archaeologist for several years before hearing that SCRAP was more rigorous with its paperwork; she turned up a few years ago bringing wonderful shovels with corrugated blades. She is the part-owner of a True Value Hardware store and nobody’s fool, as well as being pretty much my age and really altogether a good egg to work or play with. Her beloved had given her a digital camera in 2001. She was frightened of it. It turned out Monica had had a digital camera class; the two of us had a great time reading the manual and figuring out Linda’s camera, which was indeed on the daunting side and very nice. We made sure Linda had a better grasp of how to make it sit up and beg, and since Linda has a good eye she was already taking fairly decent pictures when she could overcome her fears. The next day Dick taught her some of the basic moves in Photoshop, how to crop and do away with power lines. It is fun to help someone do something she would be good at with only a little help.

July 18, Tuesday of the second week

It is a great relief not to write once again how this was the hottest day so far. It was cloudy, which helped, and it still managed to be offensively humid, but it was much less bad than the last few days. Mike Malburne appeared yesterday afternoon and spent the night, and Dawn decided the best thing she could do with us was sending us back up the hill to complete the line of test pits. So we caused no trouble among the other diggers, and we had a pleasant time.

[unlike yesterday when I nearly had to kill him. Then, I was trowelling very slowly in the shady corner (plus 3 bugs, though) with the interesting rocks (not really very) and trying to get a reading with the laser level, and it wasn't working. I was concerned that I had somehow broken the one remaining (of three) laser targets. The reason it wasn't working was because Mikey was standing in front of the laser level, blocking it, wondering when I was going to notice. We have a long history, in which I have screamed or leapt out of my skin swearing eternal vengeance, just because he has done something like jump at me out of a closet. He tried to make nice to me the rest of the day.]

It was passably comfortable up on the hill; we didn't find anything, of course. I found some pieces of quartz and I asked me about them, but though I tried to be kind I wondered why I was wasting my time. We did get some nice big chunks to take home to Doug, though. He likes non-cultural quartz. We came down the hill and took a long drink of water. After we complained long enough, Dick and Dawn put us on a one-by they had started the first session, a couple weeks ago. It was down to about 45 cm below the surface -- except in one corner. This, we figured out after a bit, was because it got complicated. I accepted this, becoming convinced I would mess up the archaeology and earn a Look from Dick or Dawn. Neither of them quite believed me as I came closer to gibbering, though after I threatened to hit Dawn behind the knee Dick suggested I drink more water.

Eventually Dick came over and poked at it and called everyone over. The pit really was that bad. We have had adjoining (which is to say, four meters/five long strides apart) test pits that looked like they were on different continents: one'll have sides all one color of soil and the other will look, according to one Catelyn, like a leopard seal. This one-by sat on a boundary, with nearly all of the Northeast corner a compact olive silt and most of the other three quads in a loose dark gray sand. This sand turned up as soon as we started to scrape off the top layer, which was a liverish brown. These distinctions constitute zone changes (or they might constitute features, which are the result of particular action, like a hearth or a posthole. You don't always know even after you dig them, either, particularly if you only get a corner of it at the bottom of your test pit).
Anyway, I had a Zone III in olive under Zone II, which had been mostly already excavated, and a Zone IV lying next to it, also under Zone II, with what seems to be some pretty sharp boundaries. Dick invited us to consider a flooded area, with a dune to one side, that gets flooded again and a wave full of sand comes up and slices off the top of the dune as it deposits a load of different sand on top of both. Also the idea of inter-digitated layers, overlapping one another and interwoven like clasped fingers.

To top it off, I think I also have an animal burrow in my Zone III thing. Time will tell. Unfortunately it has an impenetrable accent.

We stopped by the hardware store on the way back to camp and I asked if we could stay in the Beast (big old pick-up that weighs 9000 lbs, empty. Really). "Please don't make me go shopping." Dick advised me to drink more water. The drive back to the camp takes about half an hour; the five of us were treated to sightings of a low-flying great blue heron, a bear, and a fox with maybe a rabbit in its jaws.

George and Megan made marinated steak cubes en brochette to die for (the food has been excellent this dig, and I haven't made any of it). I opened my big bottle of Italian Cabernet Sauvignon and another of a nasty Pinot Noir and Linda had some old vine Zinfandel. We drew three little glasses and were able to watch Barbara realize she really could taste differences of body and spiciness. Since she has recently decided she wants to learn about wine it was a heart-warming moment.

It developed that some of the big threatening clouds we had seen and been briefly spattered by were on their way South to hail on Massachusetts. The air behind them was dryer and cooler. The front going through was not terribly dramatic but the effect on our environment has been striking.