Notes To Self

1. Your prof is potentially reading this: Don’t say anything incriminating.

2. Barefoot is best. I am trying to train up my feet to be tougher. Also it is better than having shoeprints in your pit.

3. Stop eating dirt. Though it can be conducive to comparing stone to bone, there can also be dormant disease in the cold soils up north and there have been reports of archaeologists contracting illnesses.

4. #3 may be incriminating. Please see #1 again.

5, Note to self: Grouse chicks are really cute. So that bird that you now think is disgusting was once cute. This could be helpful for conquering bird fear.

6. Denali complex had microblades but Nenana/Chindadn did not.

7. Illinoian/Reid glaciation: 200, 000 – 120, 000 years ago. Wisconsin/McConnell glaciation: 70, 000 – 11,000 years ago. Glacial maximum of this was when people came over on Beringia.

8. Write letter of discontent to Apple. Beringia is a word and should not be underlined, spelling and grammar.

9. I really hope my tent is fully waterproof.

10. Be less obvious. While collectively, we got Josh to day “student government” approximately 5-6 times yesterday, the gig may now be up on that one. But is was fun while it lasted.

11. Sweep tent or something. It’s a mess in here.

12. Naan + cheese = a delicious grilled cheese sandwich.

13. Keep with the glasses. You know that putting in those contacts in previous weeks was disgusting and your hands are much too filthy for that.

14. Slightly moving your hand troweling all day may seem like enough exercise to be a license to eat, but it’s really not.

15. Stop carb-loading. You’re consuming your daily intake of calories in all the sugar and cream that’s in your coffee.

16. Become stronger and learn how to drink coffee black.

17. Be more secretive about yours and Amanda’s secret handshake.

18. Charge phone. Music makes a happy pit.

19. Get “Safe and Sound” by the Capital Cities on said phone.

20. Don’t let local girl, Leslie tell you sasquatch stories before bed. You may think you are brave but that solo walk to the outhouse will test you.

Predictions

I felt good about our pit the day Lisa found our first artifact. Daniel told Amanda that she would find something in her pit today, and she did. Predictions of what will occur have been holding up thus far. Can I predict a mammoth head with an imbedded projectile point for myself?

No, I cannot. However, I did make my first real discoveries since the historical artifacts for myself today. I thought that piece of colluvium was bone and that interesting looking rock with the minerals aligned in such a manner that they looked like shell was an artifact as well. But that vermin tooth and obsidian flake today were the real deal. This I am sure of.

The midterm is today. Maybe I should be more stressed but Stormin’ Norman ensures us that it will be easy. I will let you know on the other side. Somehow, I think it is quite possible that he is overestimating the amount of knowledge I have accumulated. Or perhaps I will surprise myself. Let’s hope for the later.

This week has been stifling hot, as previously lamented about, but luckily this meant that Stormin’ Norman took pity on our souls and let us have a shower this evening. Very refreshing. It is possible to forget how dirty you are while in the field because as stated beforehand, clean is a relative term. Still, you remember what clean is and how nice clean is when clean becomes a reality. (As opposed to some occurrence so distant that it seems almost mythological).

This evening in town was also spent in part at the community garden, complete with greenhouse and pump track—a type of bike track for the kids to amuse themselves on as the parents garden. I am a big fan of community gardens. Who doesn’t love a nice commune feel? I didn’t realize before this excursion that there are many things like cucumber and tomatoes that are unable to grow here. Apparently Dawson City has a better climate for growing things than Whitehorse even though it is further North. Interesting.

Things to look forward to: Art and Archaeology program next week. I don’t know how we’re going to manage that many people but it certainly should be a rewarding time. I am potentially doing the video for this as part of my term project. Check out the post entitled “June 24, 2013” for more details.

Stormin’ Norman “caught up” on my blog and told me it has “flavour” and tells of many things going on around here or something like that. I really could not tell if this meant he liked it or not but I am going to assume that it doesn’t 100% displease him as he said to carry on.

As a side note, I think I may write more prose-like in a subsequent post but in the meantime, let me “carry on” with more things I want to say in a typical conversation tone. 

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?