So, my regular readership (all 7 of you) will recall that on Week 0, I made mention of the blog post "Recipe for Surviving an Archaeological Excavation," by Marielle Velander, specifically that I considered it to be somewhat incomplete in its advice. Certainly, nothing that she said is wrong particularly the point about hydration, (drink water kiddos, if you don't you'll die), but for those with less sunny dispositions as yours truly, I certainly felt that there were a few important points worth adding. I doubt that these will apply to all people in all circumstances, but the following points are, I feel, solid advice for not being miserable for the entire dig.
1: Make sure you're properly prepared: This is the first thing and probably the most important. I'm not gonna go over the standard kit, as your excavation leaders should've given you the info you need in that regard, but I am going to emphasize things that came up a lot for me: There's gonna be a lot of physical wear on your body, especially in the first week or so, so make sure you're properly equipped to deal with it. First, prevention: make sure your shoes and socks fit very well, know where the friction points are and moleskin those places up. Blisters are not an acceptable excuse for absence, and they make the work x1000 worse, especially on your feet. Likewise, make sure you dress appropriately. Long, light and loose (within reason) is your best bet for staying cool and free of sunburns, followed by religious application of sunscreen (even if you're dark skinned. It's not gonna kill ya, and nobody thinks you're tough). Next: antiperspirant/talcum powder: sweating is fine and even good, but you gotta make sure it doesn't stick around after you're done. Finally: repair: bandages, gauze, medical tape antiseptic ointment, rash and burn ointment. Most of the time, you won't need them. When you do, it's a pain to get them after you need them, even when you're in a big city.
1a: Just an addendum: you're going to forget something, or you're gonna need something that you weren't expecting. Make sure you're prepared for your lack of preparation. Yes, that does actually make sense. Just think about it.
2: Know your surroundings: Don't be an idiot like me and take a week to figure out how to feed yourself properly. Scope out your surroundings, know when and where you can get money, food, medicine, toiletries and privacy. Also: make sure you know where to go before you have to be there. Being late on the first day isn't very fun.
3: The work is supposed to suck: If you feel miserable when you're digging for the first time, good, that's normal. Unless you're really in shape or are an obsessive, early morning gardener, the physical and mental demands on your body are going to be very different from what you have experienced in the past. The body is a stubborn beast, and doesn't really like to do things differently than what it normally does or expend too much energy. If you find yourself dying, you look around and all the vets are acting like this is nothing, don't worry about it too much and just focus on making it to the end of the day/break/the next 4 minutes. They felt the exact same thing you are now, probably. Or at least I did, and it turned out alright for me, so you're in good company. Just power through it as much as possible, because at the end of the day, it's really not that hard of work. Your body just thinks it is because it lacks perspective.
4: Pace yourself: Look archaeological with discretion. It's better to slow down, do things properly and stop when you're done than to try to keep up with 3-4th year vets. Be very clear what you're supposed to be doing, and if you don't know don't keep doing things. Learn to use sweeping as a breather. Unless you're sweeping for an actual reason, like clearing the site at the beginning of the day, cleaning during/after passes, or sweeping for photoshoots, then how well you're sweeping isn't as important as keeping yourself warm and limber for when you have something to do. There will be people who can and likely will outpace you and you don't need to keep up with them. My own roommate ran an ultra-marathon over the second weekend. On accident. On an empty stomach. And showed up on Monday fresh as daisies. But for people who aren't insane, the fact of the matter is that once the day ends and all the washing up is done, you don't have to do anything, and most of the time you aren't expected to do anything. Take advantage of this. Your poor supervisors actually have to keep working, so it always could be worse.
5: Drink Responsibly There will probably be some sort of drinking party every day of the week, and if you're up for it, by all means go ahead. From what I've heard, though, digging with a hangover is basically one of the worst things that can happen to someone, so go easy on the bottle during the work week, eh? This is especially true for all you law-abiding underclassmen: just because you can legally drink every day of the week, doesn't mean you should. Save it for the weekend.
5: Hydration: Literally just stay hydrated all of the time. Yes, even now. Yes, right now. Go get a glass of water.
6: You'll be done eventually: Despite how long it feels at the start, excavations don't last very long. I was at it only for two months, and that's a marathon by archaeological standards. If you enjoy the work, savor it while it lasts. If you hate it: it's really not as long as you think it is, and if you stick it out to the end, good ol' effort justification will make you think you enjoyed it. And if you can look past the oppressive blur of hard labor, you'll probably find that archaeologists are a real decent lot. Quality folks, archaeologists.
Well, that's about everything. I for one have enjoyed the time we've shared. Me, rambling in run-on sentences about things vaguely related to archaeology. You, patiently waiting entire blog posts for me to get to the point. It's been real fun, but our little trip down memory lane has ended. So, for the final time, I will bid you farewell. And seriously: dehydration is really bad for you, just get a drink of water already.
Michael
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Saturday, April 8, 2017
Week 7: Social Negotiations
As you know, the mission of this blog is to give as honest a picture of the life of an archaeologist (well, archaeology digger. Proper archaeologists do far more note-taking and geometry). As such I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that drinking parties are a big part of archaeological culture. Four of the five days out of the week there is some sort of post-dig gathering which involves getting together around a pint. I expect this evolved from rural archaeology: there's just not a lot to do out in the middle of nowhere, even if it was a bustling metropolis 8,000 years ago. It's practically part of the job description, for better or for worse.
Now, this isn't a teetotaling blog. I have no problem with alcohol, although I'm not a huge fan of it myself. Sola dosis facit venenum, and other people's habits are none of my business. What I'm actually more interested in is the sheer volume of social outings in an archaeological dig. I'm a pretty solitary person myself, and the thought of spending seven hours a day five days a week with other people and then immediately spending more time with them afterwords makes my head spin. It boggles the mind. I counted myself lucky every day this trip that I have roommates as private as myself.
Now, this isn't a new dilemma for me. A good portion of my college career was spent dealing with the sheer volume of social interaction, and honestly, I didn't really deal with it particularly well. I actually find it incredible that most people considered dorms to be the hotbed of friend-making, because for me, the lack of privacy was suffocating. Sure, I met a whole number of nice, interesting people, but the fact that I could never get away from other people made me kind of shut down. I spent most of my freshman and sophomore year desperately looking for some place where there just weren't other people, which is a very difficult thing to do on a college campus in one of the largest cities in the country. As a matter of fact, it wasn't until I got my own apartment that I actually started relaxing and opening up to people. Having a private space is very important to me.
This being the case, I was quite apprehensive when I first came to the dig. Once again, I was dealing with a severe deficit of private space, and a social marathon by all accounts. I was quite worried that I would repeat my first two years of college, in which I would become so hostile to the presence of other people that I would act with hostility to the people themselves.
What I hadn't expected was the effect that the actual physical work would have on me. A lot of my social aversion comes from sensory overload. People are very complex, in terms of sensory input: not only do you have the physical stimuli, but you also have social cues to watch and listen for, group dynamics to keep track of, and, in large groups, need to devote energy to constantly jocky for position in a conversation. Highly introverted people like myself can be pretty easily overwhelmed by it all, especially if there are a lot of people to pay attention to. In the same way that an over-sweetened beverage is disgustingly sweet, or listening to heavy traffic is exhausting, it's the same with people.
What I found with heavy manual labor, though, is that by the end of the day I was so exhausted and filled with endorphins that the chaotic buzz subsided somewhat. It wasn't that I was suddenly a social butterfly because I had broken a sweat, but more that I was so dog-tired that I just stopped caring about the higher level social stuff. Physical appearance, for one, fell by the wayside: in archaeology everyone looks terrible (except for one girl who dropped in the middle of the dig for a couple of weeks. Somehow she managed to look like a fashion model every day). Likewise, my tolerance for clique politics dropped to next to nothing. I'm sure there was some drama in certain pockets here or there, but I was too exhausted to care. If someone was nice to me, they seemed fine, if not, great, one less person I have to care about As a note, I did not actually meet anyone who wasn't pleasant to me. This year was a good lot.
What was most surprising to me though was that this attitude shift stuck around. Even at the beginning of the dig, I was apprehensive about the time I spent around people, and the time I didn't. I usually spent most of my off-time by myself, and a good deal of the time for the first couple of weeks I was rather anxious about it. Not because I didn't want to spend time alone, but because I felt like I wasn't supposed to want to spend so much time alone, and I worried what signals I might be sending to others that I rarely went to the various after-dig festivities. But as time went on, I increasingly realized that other people didn't really care, and neither did I.
Ironically, this actually allowed me to be more social. Since I didn't spend nearly as much of my social energy considering the possibilities of what other people were thinking when I was alone, I had more energy to actually spend time with others, and the time I did spend alone was much more restful. Instead of spending 95% of my off time alone and 5% of my time with others, I now spend 85% of my time alone and 15% of my time with other people. Hey, I like my alone time. Sue me.
So what's the take away from this? Cure your social anxiety by doing so much manual labor you no longer have the energy to care? Eh, I'm not a psychotherapist. It worked for me.
Now, this isn't a teetotaling blog. I have no problem with alcohol, although I'm not a huge fan of it myself. Sola dosis facit venenum, and other people's habits are none of my business. What I'm actually more interested in is the sheer volume of social outings in an archaeological dig. I'm a pretty solitary person myself, and the thought of spending seven hours a day five days a week with other people and then immediately spending more time with them afterwords makes my head spin. It boggles the mind. I counted myself lucky every day this trip that I have roommates as private as myself.
Now, this isn't a new dilemma for me. A good portion of my college career was spent dealing with the sheer volume of social interaction, and honestly, I didn't really deal with it particularly well. I actually find it incredible that most people considered dorms to be the hotbed of friend-making, because for me, the lack of privacy was suffocating. Sure, I met a whole number of nice, interesting people, but the fact that I could never get away from other people made me kind of shut down. I spent most of my freshman and sophomore year desperately looking for some place where there just weren't other people, which is a very difficult thing to do on a college campus in one of the largest cities in the country. As a matter of fact, it wasn't until I got my own apartment that I actually started relaxing and opening up to people. Having a private space is very important to me.
This being the case, I was quite apprehensive when I first came to the dig. Once again, I was dealing with a severe deficit of private space, and a social marathon by all accounts. I was quite worried that I would repeat my first two years of college, in which I would become so hostile to the presence of other people that I would act with hostility to the people themselves.
What I hadn't expected was the effect that the actual physical work would have on me. A lot of my social aversion comes from sensory overload. People are very complex, in terms of sensory input: not only do you have the physical stimuli, but you also have social cues to watch and listen for, group dynamics to keep track of, and, in large groups, need to devote energy to constantly jocky for position in a conversation. Highly introverted people like myself can be pretty easily overwhelmed by it all, especially if there are a lot of people to pay attention to. In the same way that an over-sweetened beverage is disgustingly sweet, or listening to heavy traffic is exhausting, it's the same with people.
What I found with heavy manual labor, though, is that by the end of the day I was so exhausted and filled with endorphins that the chaotic buzz subsided somewhat. It wasn't that I was suddenly a social butterfly because I had broken a sweat, but more that I was so dog-tired that I just stopped caring about the higher level social stuff. Physical appearance, for one, fell by the wayside: in archaeology everyone looks terrible (except for one girl who dropped in the middle of the dig for a couple of weeks. Somehow she managed to look like a fashion model every day). Likewise, my tolerance for clique politics dropped to next to nothing. I'm sure there was some drama in certain pockets here or there, but I was too exhausted to care. If someone was nice to me, they seemed fine, if not, great, one less person I have to care about As a note, I did not actually meet anyone who wasn't pleasant to me. This year was a good lot.
What was most surprising to me though was that this attitude shift stuck around. Even at the beginning of the dig, I was apprehensive about the time I spent around people, and the time I didn't. I usually spent most of my off-time by myself, and a good deal of the time for the first couple of weeks I was rather anxious about it. Not because I didn't want to spend time alone, but because I felt like I wasn't supposed to want to spend so much time alone, and I worried what signals I might be sending to others that I rarely went to the various after-dig festivities. But as time went on, I increasingly realized that other people didn't really care, and neither did I.
Ironically, this actually allowed me to be more social. Since I didn't spend nearly as much of my social energy considering the possibilities of what other people were thinking when I was alone, I had more energy to actually spend time with others, and the time I did spend alone was much more restful. Instead of spending 95% of my off time alone and 5% of my time with others, I now spend 85% of my time alone and 15% of my time with other people. Hey, I like my alone time. Sue me.
So what's the take away from this? Cure your social anxiety by doing so much manual labor you no longer have the energy to care? Eh, I'm not a psychotherapist. It worked for me.
Saturday, April 1, 2017
Week 6: the Well-fare State
So we've been perambulating pretty far from the actual business of digging recently, as the day to day affairs of the work is pretty straightforward. I suppose I could talk about more nuanced things, like soil consistency and Munsell charts and the like, but to be honest, the only way anyone ever really understands that is if they're working with the soil every day, which, as readers of blogs, I assume you probably are not.
Fortunately, in this week there was a change of pace. Rather than the usual in-trench digging, the section I was working in, Beta-Theta East, had just begun to open up a well to excavate, one of the more interesting things one can do on a dig. As the process of excavating a well is much more complicated than digging in a straight line and trying not to break anything important, this week I will give an in-depth account of the process.
The process of digging a well begins as any other excavation: the area is sectioned off into its own basket, and the fill is removed as per usual archaeological process (I presume, I wasn't actually present for the first part of the excavation). However, once you dig deep enough into the well in which soil can not easily be removed (usually once you have to start lifting soil overhead), then things start to get more complicated. In order to keep digging, you have to install a winch overhead, and, because manpower is cheap and gasoline is expensive, this winch is probably going to be human powered.
Now this is when the operation starts to get a bit more labor intensive. By the time that you install the winch, it is probably going to be too dark to sift through dirt and, increasingly, mud for artifacts, so you have to bring in sorters. If you've got an enthusiastic digger, this will necessitate several sorters, as you can dig a lot faster if you don't need to be constantly scanning for artifacts, and by this point about 1/2-2/3s of the trench's manpower is devoted to digging this one basket: One digger, two winch-pullers and two to four sorters. By the time you hit the water table, which we already had by the time I entered the scene, you also need a pump to draw out the water in the well. Don't get too enthusiastic about the pump though. Even when it was in perfect working order the pump served less to drain the well and more to keep the water at a tolerably waist-deep level. One final addition which, from what I heard, was a new innovation was a metal cage to prevent the walls from caving in. I must admit, that I was slightly worried that this, again: from what I heard, was not usually employed. As it was, the safety provided from cave-ins was somewhat undermined by the danger of cutting yourself on the exposed metal edges while digging in muddy water. Still, I'd rather have tetanus or gangrene than be buried alive. I'd prefer neither, to be honest, but beggars can't be choosers.
Of the well-related tasks, I must say, my favorite by far is winch-pulling, which should come as little surprise to regular readers, as winch-pulling is by all accounts, the easiest job in a dig. For the most part, your job is to stand around the well making sure that the well-digger is all good and not having a panic attack from the claustrophobia or anything, occasionally cranking a handle to bring up another haul of gravely mud. More to the point though, your proximity to the well gives a nice cool draft, which is great since you're basically standing around in the sun the entire day, and your upright posture means that you can listen in to most conversations around the well. As a matter of fact, the only real labor intensive task is replacing the ladder when the well-digger had enough of being trapped in a dark, watery hole in the ground, which happens infrequently enough to be a nice change of pace.
Speaking of being tapped in a dark, watery hole in the ground, I am sure that you all are eager to learn what it's like to dig in a well. Fortunately, I subjected myself to the task just for your edification. The first step of digging in a well is to equip yourself appropriately: a hard-hat, of course, and one of several pairs of galoshes, none of which really fit but you're sure as hell not going down there in your shoes. Now, suitably prepared for the task, you descend into the well, either by a ladder or, if the well is deep enough, lowered down by the winch-pullers. Once you are in the well, your galoshes immediately fill with water and bracing yourself against the cold, you realize that your shoulders are far too broad and legs too thick to comfortably crouch down and dig here, but you're already wet and the last guy lasted four hours down here without a break, so you might as well give it a go. You clumsily situate yourself between the ever-obstrurent pump, ignore the fact that you are currently sharing a muddy pit of water with a steel cage and a submerged, high-voltage machine, and get cracking. Any illusion that the upper half of your body at least will remain dry is shattered as water streams down from your dust-pan down your shirt. After about twenty minutes of digging, your supervisor leans his head over the well-head and informs you that it's picture day today, so you need to get out of the well. You dissimulate the fact that you are very happy that you're not in the well for the entire picture-taking process, and then after its over you go back down into the well for another forty-five minutes or so to make a good show of it. Once you get out, you spend far too much time trying to get your galoshes off, as their small size and suction-cup like grip means that they have clamped fast to your foot. You resign yourself to sorting, which, despite how muddy it is, is a pleasant task, as you get to sit down and generally doesn't require too much effort. Your replacement then goes down the well and spends the next five hours down there, digging out more mud every fifteen minutes than you did for the entire hour. Fortunately, all the energy which you are saving in the sorting job can be employed to repress the shame for being such a terrible well-digger.
So overall, I'd give the whole experience a 6/10. I would recommend trying it out at least once, as it makes basically every other part of an archaeological excavation seem much more palatable in comparison.
Michael
Fortunately, in this week there was a change of pace. Rather than the usual in-trench digging, the section I was working in, Beta-Theta East, had just begun to open up a well to excavate, one of the more interesting things one can do on a dig. As the process of excavating a well is much more complicated than digging in a straight line and trying not to break anything important, this week I will give an in-depth account of the process.
The process of digging a well begins as any other excavation: the area is sectioned off into its own basket, and the fill is removed as per usual archaeological process (I presume, I wasn't actually present for the first part of the excavation). However, once you dig deep enough into the well in which soil can not easily be removed (usually once you have to start lifting soil overhead), then things start to get more complicated. In order to keep digging, you have to install a winch overhead, and, because manpower is cheap and gasoline is expensive, this winch is probably going to be human powered.
Now this is when the operation starts to get a bit more labor intensive. By the time that you install the winch, it is probably going to be too dark to sift through dirt and, increasingly, mud for artifacts, so you have to bring in sorters. If you've got an enthusiastic digger, this will necessitate several sorters, as you can dig a lot faster if you don't need to be constantly scanning for artifacts, and by this point about 1/2-2/3s of the trench's manpower is devoted to digging this one basket: One digger, two winch-pullers and two to four sorters. By the time you hit the water table, which we already had by the time I entered the scene, you also need a pump to draw out the water in the well. Don't get too enthusiastic about the pump though. Even when it was in perfect working order the pump served less to drain the well and more to keep the water at a tolerably waist-deep level. One final addition which, from what I heard, was a new innovation was a metal cage to prevent the walls from caving in. I must admit, that I was slightly worried that this, again: from what I heard, was not usually employed. As it was, the safety provided from cave-ins was somewhat undermined by the danger of cutting yourself on the exposed metal edges while digging in muddy water. Still, I'd rather have tetanus or gangrene than be buried alive. I'd prefer neither, to be honest, but beggars can't be choosers.
Of the well-related tasks, I must say, my favorite by far is winch-pulling, which should come as little surprise to regular readers, as winch-pulling is by all accounts, the easiest job in a dig. For the most part, your job is to stand around the well making sure that the well-digger is all good and not having a panic attack from the claustrophobia or anything, occasionally cranking a handle to bring up another haul of gravely mud. More to the point though, your proximity to the well gives a nice cool draft, which is great since you're basically standing around in the sun the entire day, and your upright posture means that you can listen in to most conversations around the well. As a matter of fact, the only real labor intensive task is replacing the ladder when the well-digger had enough of being trapped in a dark, watery hole in the ground, which happens infrequently enough to be a nice change of pace.
Speaking of being tapped in a dark, watery hole in the ground, I am sure that you all are eager to learn what it's like to dig in a well. Fortunately, I subjected myself to the task just for your edification. The first step of digging in a well is to equip yourself appropriately: a hard-hat, of course, and one of several pairs of galoshes, none of which really fit but you're sure as hell not going down there in your shoes. Now, suitably prepared for the task, you descend into the well, either by a ladder or, if the well is deep enough, lowered down by the winch-pullers. Once you are in the well, your galoshes immediately fill with water and bracing yourself against the cold, you realize that your shoulders are far too broad and legs too thick to comfortably crouch down and dig here, but you're already wet and the last guy lasted four hours down here without a break, so you might as well give it a go. You clumsily situate yourself between the ever-obstrurent pump, ignore the fact that you are currently sharing a muddy pit of water with a steel cage and a submerged, high-voltage machine, and get cracking. Any illusion that the upper half of your body at least will remain dry is shattered as water streams down from your dust-pan down your shirt. After about twenty minutes of digging, your supervisor leans his head over the well-head and informs you that it's picture day today, so you need to get out of the well. You dissimulate the fact that you are very happy that you're not in the well for the entire picture-taking process, and then after its over you go back down into the well for another forty-five minutes or so to make a good show of it. Once you get out, you spend far too much time trying to get your galoshes off, as their small size and suction-cup like grip means that they have clamped fast to your foot. You resign yourself to sorting, which, despite how muddy it is, is a pleasant task, as you get to sit down and generally doesn't require too much effort. Your replacement then goes down the well and spends the next five hours down there, digging out more mud every fifteen minutes than you did for the entire hour. Fortunately, all the energy which you are saving in the sorting job can be employed to repress the shame for being such a terrible well-digger.
So overall, I'd give the whole experience a 6/10. I would recommend trying it out at least once, as it makes basically every other part of an archaeological excavation seem much more palatable in comparison.
Michael
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