Sailing, sailing

Big news! It's not very Classical, but it is archaeological and really cool. Even the historic period people are talking about it.

A survey team on Crete found stone tools at several sites on the southern coast dating to the Lower Paleolithic period, about 130,000 years ago. As in, over 100,000 years older than any known Mediterranean seafaring, and 70,000 years older than ANY other known seafaring (from Polynesia to Australia, about 60,000 years ago).

For a little perspective - 130,000 years ago predates anatomically modern humans, so the peoples who were out and about on the Mediterranean back then were Neanderthals, or another species of early hominid. No one (that I've heard, anyway) is talking about the implications for this, but to me it implies levels of organization completely unexpected this early in history. So, pretty cool.

I must admit, the entire contents of this post I got from this article in the London Times. Apparently the researchers announced the finds at the Archaeological Institute of America meeting in Anaheim a couple weeks ago. I, alas, did not hear this there; I was probably at a session about black figure pottery or Downtown Disney or something. Dang. But, word on the street is that their article is being "fast-tracked" in one of the major Greek archaeology publications.

Return of the Mack

Well.

It's no secret to many of you that I had a bit of a rough Fall. I attribute this to many things: the move and missing old friends and my old city, lack of enthusiasm about most of my classes, generally getting used to the pressures and politics of a new department, community, and peer group, and, perhaps most significantly, the lack of direction which follows the achievement of a long term goal. For years, getting to this point - namely matriculating in the PhD program at Michigan - has really been my motivating force, the goal to which I directed all my professional efforts. And, now that I'm here, now what? Not to mention the completely depressing thought that I am 27 years old and just beginning this long march toward a doctorate. After working so hard to get to this point, all it seemed I had gained in return was the opportunity to work even harder to get to the next point - and I was not at all sure what I wanted that point to be. Figure six years more of this, then the race toward tenure - when would it end? Thoroughly demoralizing.

So I would get home at the end of the day and feel totally uninspired to write or think more about archaeology. This blog is supposed to be about the love I have for my field, and love I could not find. The last thing I wanted to do was confront and complain about all these frustrations, and I was operating under the "if you can't say something nice..." premise.

But, I now face a new semester and a new year. The dreaded first semester is over. Even better, I'm officially done with Greek! Any more Greek I do from this point forward will be of my own free will and I will have no one to blame but myself for the pain it causes. I'm genuinely excited about 3 of my 4 classes, and neutral on the fourth. (Compare last semester, when I was neutral at best on all 4, even from the onset.) I have several resolutions for myself to make this semester better. Many of them are personal and designed to help me get out of the departmental bubble of stress and anxiety in which I have resided for the last several months. But perhaps most significantly, I think I have found a new 'ultimate' goal, a new aspiration to define and direct my forward progress from this point.

I spent last weekend at the Archaeological Institute of America annual meeting in Anaheim. I had no real reason to go, beyond showing up to appear invested in the field and hopefully network a bit. I ended up being extremely glad I did, though. My old undergraduate department is hiring, so many of my old professors who don't typically attend the meetings were there. We had an impromptu reunion with a few other former students who happened to be around, and it was just brilliant. These are the people who originally inspired me to do this with my life, and they have always been supportive, encouraging, and just a joy to spend time with. Both of my graduate school departments have also been good, and I have no real complaints about them, but the atmosphere is just different. I'm a favored child of my undergrad department, and they have known me for a long time - a benefit of friendships I'm coming to appreciate more and more the older I get and more people I know.

There was also a great session about Career Strategies for graduate students in archaeology. The panelists were frank but also encouraging, and they made a lot of points which were nice to hear (not least of which is that being older, and having more life experiences, is all the better these days on the job market). And suddenly it dawned on me: my 'ultimate' goal is to have a tenured job at Macalester, or at least a similar institution. A high performing, liberal arts school in an urban environment that values scholarship and teaching, multicultural experiences, and has great departmental dynamics and support. Sure, a lot always depends on timing, what jobs open when I happen to need one, but as far as thinking about how I ultimately want to tailor and market myself goes, this is a pretty concrete and, I think, attainable goal.

So there it is. The next real, big goal of where I want to end up. I still hope to run my own field project one day, and want to keep some doors open toward working in non-profits or NGOs instead of the academic market (shhh, don't tell), but in all reality - who am I kidding - academia it will be.

I feel a spark of the love returning. Time to fan the flame.

The thrilling life

Oddly enough, I've been feeling borderline buried in work for the last 10 days, even though classes don't start until tomorrow. Late last week I had three "diagnostic" exams, in Greek, Latin, and ancient history, supposedly to help in placing me into the correct courses. For a seminar on archaeological theory, the professor asked me to read five background books, because my theory background is a little... informal, shall we say. All this was mostly under control, until I received an email from my Greek professor on Thursday asking us to read a "decent" amount of a thirty page speech before class on Tuesday. So I've spent most of my Labor Day weekend doing homework and while I'd like to think it may get better once school starts, I'm pretty sure it won't. Still, I'm excited for new challenges, new professors, and getting into a routine again.

In other news, I completely, totally miss the Minnesota State Fair.

I'm Back

I'm currently sitting in the Reference Room of the Hatcher Graduate Library at the University of Michigan, and for the first time in twelve days, I feel at home in Ann Arbor.

I had to come to the library to check some references for the ridiculous weaving tools paper that I started way back in January. When I got to DS110 (the call number for books on archaeology in Israel), I found myself in a wonderland of knowledge, books I'd only dreamed about or heard of or never knew existed. DS110 at the University of Minnesota was rather pitiful, about six or seven shelves in total, and spread out among regular size, quartos, and folios to save shelf space by putting the tall books only with other tall books. DS110 at Michigan is at least 3-4 times as big. Minnesota, annoyingly, stopped obtaining archaeology books around 1980, and had the habit of only acquiring one or two of a series, ie the book on lamps from the City of David but nothing else. Then, you had to engage in a big fight with the interlibrary loan system to convince it that you needed City of David IV, and the one in the collection was City of David II. Here at Hatcher, serials are prettily lined up in rows because they're all here! Plus all the Atiquots, Tel Avivs, Palestine Exploration Quarterlies... heaven. Just heaven. And that was before I turned around and discovered all the books on Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Granted, I could always ILL this stuff, and often did. But as great as the modern computerized card catalogue is, and as helpful as bibliographies are, sometimes visually perusing the shelves is necessary in order to find just the right source. For example, I found a 2008 book called Textile Production in Pre-Roman Italy (in GN799, not DS110, just to be clear) which looks to be relevant and beneficial to the weaving tools project.

The move has been overwhelming in many ways, full of "we're not in Minnesota anymore, Toto" moments. With three and a half weeks between my arrival and the start of classes, I've had a fair amount of time to think about just what I'm getting myself into, not just for the next 5-7 years, but conceivably for the rest of my life. And I've had some doubts, to be honest. But my little sojourn this morning reawakened some passion and excitement, like a little reminder ribbon of who I am and why I'm here. I'm not in Michigan to sit at the DMV for three hours, or to discover the local grocery stores don't carry Rosetto tortellini or the small size of frozen pizza or Mrs Renfro's black bean salsa, or even to go visit my sister only four hours away. The reason I'm here is to utilize the books in DS110 and elsewhere to learn new things and discover new ways to think about those things. And maybe, just maybe, influence the way others perceive and interpret those things as well.

Speaking of, I suppose I should get started on just that.

Updates Elsewhere

Yes, I totally failed to update on Shabbat as has been my habit the last few weeks. BUT, for those of you wanting updates from the field, I've written two, count 'em, two updates for the Kelsey Museum blog since my last update here. Die hards, please direct your attention here.

Aside from that, I have not updated because it has been crazy mccrazy time here. After break, it's a flat out sprint for three weeks in the field, and then the paperwork and packing up begins. This season is extra intense because it will be the last excavation summer, before the administrative building we're all working so hard on has to be published. So all the outstanding questions like, how did people get into the building (because we have yet to find an entrance) and what did the Persians walk on (because we have yet to find a floor dating to the Persian period), must now be answered or forever keep their secrets hidden away and subject to speculation.

This strain, coupled with Week 5 (now 6) blahs, is catching up a bit to the team. We've had three emergency room trips in as many days, and the bickering has entered full force. We all try to remember that everyone else is tired, and sometimes we may come off a bit short, or terse, or rude, or selfish, when we don't really mean it. Then a tired person's passing statement gets misinterpreted by a stressed out person, and the cow dung hits the fence, if you know what I mean.

Yes, folks, this is the glamorous world of archaeology.

"This is my village, this is my country"

We're one day into a three day mid-season break. I elected not to travel in order to get work done; the first day and a half have resulted in an epic failure to do just that. Yesterday, most of the "kids" (younger/less experienced team members who have never been to Israel) left for Jerusalem around 12:30. Trouble was, the day's work was not over, so other more senior members of staff and I spent the next few hours sorting, reading, and bagging my pottery and helping another trench supervisor complete his locusing (in about 3 weeks, I will tell you all about locusing. Consider yourself tantalized.) I was a bit grumpy that just because I wasn't going anywhere, I lost time from my break, but then the directors treated us all to a wonderful dinner at a steakhouse that I don't remember the name of and can't find on the internet right now. I had filet mignon medallions and portabella mushrooms in a sauce of ginger, garlic, and honey, with pecan pie and ice cream for dessert. The signs on their doors said "Shalom y'all." Wish I'd had the nerve to take a picture.

Today, we had been invited to Buq'ata, the village in the Golan Heights where our Druzim workers live, we thought for dinner but it turned into a 6 hour, full afternoon outing. We had a wonderful time, and it was fantastic to go somewhere and see something a bit different.

When the six of us got there, we first were led into a small anteroom with long cushions on the ground around the room. We chatted with various people aged one through 70 (almost all men) who came to say hi or sit with us for awhile. Most of them were people we work with on site and their relatives. Our host was Hamid, who speaks passable English, and translated for us when he was not drifting in and out himself. We were served small cups of strong, seasoned coffee and giant plates of fruit. After a couple hours, we adjourned to a larger living room with similar ground cushions and a huge spread of stuffed grape leaves, chicken, tabboleh, cheese, stuffed eggplant, hummus, and another salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, and fried flat bread, plus pita and huge folded pieces of flatbread which we used to pick up assorted bits of food. The food was wonderful, perhaps a bit heavy on vinegar and oil, a factor compounded by the single mug of water shared among the eight or nine of us dining. Then followed a small dessert of slices of honeyed cake and a rolled chocolate cake, with strawberry, mango, and grapefruit sodas.

From there, we went to Hussein's house. (Hussein is sort of the foreman/Godfather of the whole operation.) His house was huge, beautiful, and full of assorted archaeological relics like an olive press and column capitals, plus an old fashioned sewing machine and a saddle. There, we had more soda (Fanta and Coke), sweet fried honey balls and cakes, and coffee.

After that, Hamid and Hussein took us for a drive through the countryside surrounding Buq'ata, including orchards, other villages, a beautiful lake, the forest where all the men go to eat and drink on the weekend, and a view of Syria. Here's Hussein pointing out Syria to us: he's wanted there (we're pretty sure for spying for Israel in the 60s) so he proclaims Syria "no good." By the time of the car trip, we were all entering severe food comas, despite the coffee, when Hamid broke out a 6 pack of Carlsberg in the car and started opening bottles. Drinking beer! In a car!!! What a novel experience!The afternoon was much more enjoyable than I had thought it might be. I have some lovely memories, a full belly, and a deeper understanding and awareness of these people with whom I have worked side by side for two summers now but because we lack a common language, it's so hard to really learn about their lives. They were wonderful hosts who shared their homes, food, and life with six American graduate students in need of a little escape.

Floor CB17052

I (mentally) composed this post on Thursday, but haven't had the chance to actually write it down until now. So we'll all just pretend it's still Thursday for the sake of reading this, mk?

Today in my square was a very typical archaeological day in the sense that days like this are at the heart of fieldwork and research, but very atypical in that days of its ilk are rather few and far between. My assistant, my two Druzim workers and I had basically spent the last 4-5 days preparing for Thursday's operation, which was the removal of a hard plaster floor.

We had to do several small little operations for what basically boil down to two reasons: first, basic archaeological principle in removal of soil is last in, first out. Because we date the deposition of the soil by the types of things we find in it - mainly pottery - we take out the latest soil first in hopes of also taking out all its later material. If we leave any behind, we risk mixing that single sherd in with earlier soils, thereby throwing off the dating and phasing of the entire operation. (This actually happened to me this week, in a less important area. We had a piece of modern (as in less than a thousand years old) pottery in where it shouldn't have been. Bad supervisor Kate. I was annoyed.) Anyway, so before taking out the plaster floor, we had to be absolutely sure that any excess soil and stray pieces of pottery were totally vamoosed from the area around the floor, lest they somehow dislodge and make my life hell. This is harder than it sounds, as soil, roots and so on tend to cling stubbornly to the walls around the floor and to the sides of rocks, and to be disguised in robbing trenches from when locals came to take the nice cut blocks from the abandoned building for their own new construction, leaving behind little tiny bits of their stupid early Roman pottery which we now inconveniently find in the middle of the 2nd century BCE building.

The second reason of piddly slow preparation is to ensure we had the best possible photographic view and documentation of the floor before we took it out forever. My undergrad archaeology professor must have reminded us every week that archaeology is the only scientific research in which you destroy your evidence and, contrary to the hard sciences, the research can never be duplicated in double blind studies or other lab conditions. Our job then becomes to do as much documentation as we possibly can, so that if we fail in our interpretations (or even if we don't), others might be able to come along later and use our notes to reinterpret and understand. For the sake of removing the floor, that meant cleaning previously excavated, overgrown areas to show their relationship to our floor, excavating some rocky debris that interrupted the field of view, and carefully and cleanly cleaning out areas where the floor had eroded or otherwise disappeared in order to show where the floor was and where it wasn't.

Bored yet? So were we. But Thursday, the day finally came!! We began by removing the very thin upper laminate of plaster, and immediately had a big surprise. Although the floor itself had been clean, smooth, white plaster, the underside of the surface itself was chock full of teeny tiny shells! At least two or three other floors like this have been previously excavated, but none shared this characteristic, suggesting that something a bit different was going on with this floor. I suspect that the limestone used to make the plaster for this floor just happened to be very fossiliferous, but our faunal expert wasn't sure if the shells were fossilized or not and mused that in Egypt, shell had been occassionally put into floors and buildings as a rodent deterant, because the rats apparantly we put off by having to chew through sharp shells. Either way, the shelly floor was cool.

Underneath the hard, smooth upper surface was a flakey, crumbly plaster subsurface. Embedded in it were fragments of a little cookpot. Which is odd, if you think about it, but certainly handy for archaeologists. I mean, what happened, did it just happen to break and the contracter thought "might as well throw this in the mortar mix"? Maybe the workman were on lunch break and accidentally broke their picnic equipment that the wife sent along, and didn't feel like explaining so hid the evidence? Maybe they used the pot to mix the plaster, and just threw the whole thing in for good measure. Other ideas?

Benath that was a cobble subfloor, with 10-20 cm stones laid out and somewhat mortared in. After we had taken that out, we began to take out the thick layer of somewhat moist soil beneath (at least 40cm deep, we haven't reached the bottom yet), which yielded a crap ton of large pieces of pottery which we hope will give us a good idea of the date after which the floor must have been laid. Pottery reading tomorrow! I can't wait!