Time Constraints

There simply isn’t enough time to properly blog everything. How can I explain 4 days worth of information in the few minutes that I have that I’m not busy? I like to pull that phrase, “I’ll sleep when I die” but undoubtedly, in my advanced years of being almost twenty, I do need my sleep. And with the midterm approaching on Saturday, and my memory still equivalent to a goldfish, extra time is being used elsewhere.

The 21^st of June is Aboriginal Day in Canada. There was a BBQ down at the Snag campground and everyone is ridiculously nice. The food was great, I tried to overcome my natural awkwardness and be friendly. I think I succeeded. Mostly.

Ken, the electrical engineer of the area, had his boat down so that was a highlight. I love boats. If I’m ever rich (which I don’t think I will be nor do I necessarily want to be), I shall have a boat. I do have my boat license (my “pleasure craft operator” card—why they call it that I do not know) after all. Thank you, Bawlf School for giving us the most random options.

So Aboriginal Day was great. As an extra bonus, with being in town, we got to get an extra shower in, use more wifi, and pretend like we still have the capacity to be civilized. In addition to being Aboriginal Day, the 21^st was solstice. A drive up to Mount Dave provided a wonderful view of the “setting” sun. It did go down but it was a bit debatable.

Saturday was digging. I can’t remember much about it so either the blood was all rushed into my brain as I reached down into my unit, or nothing remarkable happened. Sunday morning was a work-day to make up for Friday’s afternoon off but in the afternoon we had time to go into town once more. Two showers in one week? What is this, the Hilton? Sunday afternoon once again consisted of the ritual baseball game. Plus Norm bought us supper so that was nice.

Yesterday was Monday. (A profound statement, I know). But in my defence, it was a long day in the heat. I came north to avoid the heat. Why, Yukon weather? Why? Anyway, we dug away to no avail but today Lisa almost broke my eardrum as she found the first bone in our unit. Then Josh found cooler bones and what is possibly an obsidian core tablet. Although I’m not really sure what this is. I just found some charcoal. But it’s not a competition. Or it’s not because they’re obviously winning. What’re you going to do? Except keep on keeping on.

Plus I think I win in the dirtiest face competition…which is a direct reflection of how hard I work? (Although it is more likely a direct reflection of the proportion of mosquitos on my face to dirt on my hands).

Colloquies and Colluvium

I spend a large portion of my day every day realizing that I understand little of what is going on. I may be bad at archaeology. The most difficult for me is realizing that everything I “find” is nothing. Cursed colluvium. And ice fracture. And anything else that alters the rocks and gets my hopes up only for them to be crushed later as the rocks were crushed, not by humans but natural processes.

We’re having a real issue of the blind leading the blind in the pit of despair. Thomas hasn’t done any actual Archaeology courses and I’m generally terrible at practical things, as a general rule. So we get into these long-winded colloquies over every little piece of colluvium and then we take it to PhD McGee for a third opinion, he looks at it for three seconds and then tosses it to the discard pile. Then I cry a little. It’s a viscious cycle of colloquies, colluvium, and lastly, crying. Ok, I don’t literally cry but my soul does get crushed.

Not to be melodramatic. 

Four Yellow Flowers

Today as a break, I got to spend some time with Eddy and Blake, who are something like 4 and 6 years of age and raised by Ruth. They were running around and amusing themselves with everything that was going on and definitely a nice distraction. They’re very cute kids, helpful and generous; Eddy picked me four yellow flowers.

In archaeologically related news, our units continue to be difficult and I really have no idea what is going on most of the time and require constant supervision. Good thing Josh is doing most of our excavations as we can only work on one unit of the four at a time, trying to reveal the stratigraphy and figure out what is possibly going on. Thus, I have been left with Thomas in the pit of despair as Lisa gets giddy from paleosols in another nearby unit.

So Thomas and I have been slumping around in the pit of despair, taking up the mud that was backfilled after last summer and the tarps and trying to make it resemble an archaeological excavation. I literally was kneeling in mud and rooting away today so no complaints. Again, thank goodness for the creek. During the menial labour, we had time to devise a series of schoolboy pranks. Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for Josh) the spider that we found and saved in my pocket got away before I could get it into Josh’s coffee. However, we did succeed in getting him to mention the key word “student government” approximately 7 times (Josh is involved in his student government and getting him to mention it that many times made him sound pretentious which was quite hilarious). Thomas and I also changed our PhD Mike is approaching warning cry of “caw-caw caw-caw” to mooing, oinking, and any other farm yard animal we felt like. So all in all, a productive day. So productive that we have to save the other planned prank (convincing Josh that we found a mammoth tusk—this one we will have the whole camp involved in) for tomorrow.  But later in the evening Thomas got a nosebleed and then after I laughed at him I got one so that was probably karma coming back for us.

But I mean if I’m disturbing the dirt digging for stuff, why not be a sh*t disturber at the same time? 

The Red Book

“My people help each other. Someone there [in Alaska] wants to bring me fur coat, shirt, that’s what I like. Rabbit skin, martin, potlatch food. They [Customs] want tax. It hurts my heart. . . . Where do government people think I came from? A hole in the ground? . . . Who is that Queen Elizabeth anyway? Who made her? We are Queen here, we all are Queens, Native people.” (Mrs. Bessie John, speaking to representatives of Canada Customs in Beaver Creek, 24 October 1995).

I have actually been doing readings, which is a novel idea to me. I tend to not to readings because I have in the past found them not needed to be successful in my courses. However, I get the impression that this is not the case here.

The quote above is from a reading entitled “King George Got Diarrhea” written by Norm—the title in reference to a song that is apparently sung by Dineh people as they approach the border, something that probably happens quite regularly as the border literally cuts through their land, to the point where one man’s home was directly on what would become the International Border with the States. I would probably sing a song against King George too if this were the case. As a summary, the border has many implications on the day-to-day life of the Upper Tanana people.  Things like visiting relatives, hunting, and potlatching are impeded. In one case, a funerary potlatch was completely ruined because the goods being brought over from Alaska were taxed to such a degree that it became an unaffordable sum. 

When the border was being drawn, the Native people were in consultation with Reaburn, and he came to sign an agreement that they would be able to continue to use their land, an agreement that resided in a red book. However, this red book was subsequently stolen from its location within a cache and thus renders no power. 



Missing: red book


Reward: human rights

Colluvium is the Bane of my Existence

Upon continuing on with our excavations, my pit crew and I encountered colluvium. This is gravity-transported sediment. And it is the bane of my existence.

Basically, it is completely construing what could be a sweet hearth feature in our site and making the whole area difficult to interpret. Furthermore, it is making digging a challenge as the bigger pieces should be dug around until we can ascertain with some amount of confidence that they are just colluvium and not the best stone tool to be found ever. Or just a regular stone tool. Whichever. Plus, there’s a bunch of rock in general that gets sifted out of the dirt that is collected and then I have to hum and haw over if it’s colluvium or a flake or something or what. And then I have to bother PhD Mike (he’s working on his PhD on the stratigraphy of the Little John Site and helping Norm manage all of us “budding archaeologists”) even more because I have no idea what I’m talking about to the point that he apparently told Norm that maybe Norm should do a seminar on lithics. Which causes Norm to tell us that perhaps we should review our notes from his presentation. Which causes me to realize that I know nothing and should maybe just pay a bit better attention in general. But c’est la vie?

Pawel found the first lithic artifact today: a basalt, biface flake which is pretty cool and apparently of interest because the timeframe that is is from (Late Prehistoric?) wasn’t known for large flakes. For finding the first lithic artifact, Pawel legitimately got a prize and as Norm handed it to him informed us that there are door prizes up for grabs. I clearly need to find something good.

In my musings one evening as I was trying to stop thinking and go to sleep, I thought that it might be fun to do a video montage of “Common Camp Problems” which Thomas suggested may be more aptly named “Shit Archaeologists Say” (pardon the swearing). So if anyone is a. reading this b. into archaeology and/or camping and c. has ideas for things that we might say in the video montage, please feel free to send them to kalista9@hotmail.com. Some of my favourites so far are:

Swishing my mouth with coffee counts as brushing my teeth, right?

Is that Colin rustling in his tent or a bear?

Is that dirt or a watch tan-line?

However, on that last one, in my case and Tim’s (he has red hair so he has more of an excuse than me, though I swear we’re equally white), it’s always dirt. But the good news is that dirt does come off, eventually. The bad news is that the creek is ridiculously cold and somehow I don’t learn and let Josh convince me to dive in once again into crazy cold water. This was even colder than the lake.

In other news, I have a bug bite on my back that is so large it’s like I grew another vertebrae in my back. Don’t worry, I’m fairly certain that it won’t progress into a hunchback. But only fairly. If I don’t find the best stone tool to be found ever, perhaps my bug bite can get me the starlight I oh so crave?