Archaeology Takes Time!

Hi Friends,

My unit N3 W8 still in the plow zone...

While it might at first seem odd to think of archaeology as a slow process, given movies such as the Indiana Jones franchise (see Ian’s previous blog for a comparison of real-life archaeology with that of Indy), it is indeed a meticulous and time-consuming field. We found this out in the field this summer in various ways. Whether it was the careful note-taking, the fact that it was more of a scraping process than a digging one, the closing of a level every 5 cm down that required more paperwork, the hauling of each bucket of dirt to be wet screened through 1/8th inch mesh…I could go on…it was indeed clear that this was not the fast-paced life that someone like Dr. Jones “lives”. Or, if there were approaching deadlines, it was more of a “hey we need to get all these tents set up for the open house” or “all the units have to be closed up by this day”.

We are discovering this more and more now as we work in the lab this fall. Part of our time is spent doing research for our projects, but another significant chunk has been helping with inventory of the artifacts found in the field season. For this, we look at the artifacts that we sorted this summer by unit, what side of the unit, depth, and then by artifact type--for example, we will have a larger bag that contains all the artifacts from, say, the east side of N3 W8 from the depth of 25-30 cm. Inside this larger bag, one might find a bag of charcoal, a bag of bone, a bag containing a seed bead--all from the overall context of that specific side of that specific unit at that specific depth. Each individual bag has its own tag inside as well so that we do not lose the context of those artifacts! 

Adyn weighs a ceramic rim fragment.

As we begin our work now, we double check several things. We see, for example, if all of the bone is actually bone (mudstone, as Korrin discusses in her previous blog, is rather deceptive at times). Do the bags with metal artifacts have silica packets in them? And so on. Then, we begin to note more details. How many pieces of bone are in the bag? How much do all those pieces of bone weigh (in grams)? What category does bone fall under in our lexicon? Once we have done this for all the artifacts in a bag, we then consult with Erika and she enters that information into a spreadsheet to be recorded.

All of this is time-consuming and might not seem as exciting as being out in the field. We’ve had 3-4 labs so far and aren’t even halfway done yet. But this work is just as important as finding the artifacts, if not more. And personally, I have found that the 2.5 hours we spend in the lab each week continue to fly by, just as the time this summer did.

-Abbey