Project S.W.E.A.P

Here is the official project poster as used by the University of Cologne and found on their school website describing the goals, methods, and purpose behind the field excavation we will be participating in. Our excavations at Moche Barago cave (Fig. 3) are only a small portion of the overall program to explore an establish human mobility and migration from Africa into Europe.
There are currently 21 ongoing projects in various locations throughout Africa nad Europe. Our location in Ethiopia is important to the programme because it is considered one of the initial sites for the emergence of modern humans.

A full description of the overall project can be found here: Our Way to Europe

1 more week

So it's pretty crazy to think that in one week we'll be on a plane to Amsterdam then Ethiopia a couple days later. It seemed so far away not very long ago and now it's here! I'm kinda nervous, very anxious, and mainly really excited. I have so many thoughts and ideas about what this experience is going to be like, but I feel like I have no idea what it will really be like. Over the past couple weeks with classes we've learned a lot, between flintknapping which is much more difficult than it seems and general things about African Archeology. I wish we would have talked a little more about our actual site before we left, but learning about Moche Borago on site will probably be even more useful.

Amsterdam! This is definitely an added bonus to the trip that I was not expecting at all. This is one of those cities that I've always heard about and all the crazy stories that go along with it. And now I get to go and experience it... to an extent! I'm much more excited for Ethiopia though. I've always wanted to go to Africa and experience life in a 3rd world country. It will open my eyes and really give me a different perspective on life that I believe is hard to grasp without actually experiencing it. I'm really excited to have time to hang out and play with the local children. I've got a soccer ball and a football packed and hope they will be down to play some pickup games! I think travelling after is going to be my favorite part. The opportunity to go backpacking and hiking in a place with so many different things to see makes one of my favorite hobbies even more appealing.

Well I'm super excited and I'm all ready to go, so one more week of hanging out and having fun then off for what will be the time of my life!

So I finished getting all of my shots today! Im not a fan of needles but they were too terrible. Im not going to lie though, the Typhoid vaccine HURT! both shot itself and my arm for a full day after. It felt like a tetnus shot on steroids. I was really nervous about getting the yellow fever vaccine because my dad had a really bad allergic reaction when he had to get his but I lucked out with only having a slight fever, thankfully.

Today in class we were discussing somethings to do after we leave the campsite and we get to travel around on our own. I would really like to do a trek through the Simien Mountains. I think the scenary looks absolutely incredible and I really hope I get the chance to go here before I must fly home.

we were also discussing a few of the things the group did last year and one of them was eat raw camel liver, an apparent delicacy. Personally, I dont think I would have been able to do that. I can't even eat Beef tartare and I prefer my steaks medium BUT who knows maybe the crazy whim will seize me. doubtful, but possible. One of the kids going this year, Andrew mentioned that there'd been an episode on bizarre foods where they talked about eating raw meat in Ethiopia - Andrew Zimmern is braver than me

First Day - Stone Knapping

Even though its a study abroad, I still have class two days a week. Today we learned how to make and identify stone tools.

According to Holdoway, S. and N. Stern in A Record in Stone, stone tools were once as common as coke cans and were used for everything from chopping down trees to skinning animals. Beginning as crude objects these tools evolved over time as we humans evolved intellectually. Stone artifacts are studied mostly because of their durability (few items can last for tens of thousands of years w/o deteriorating, as well as their variety. Stone technologies are a form of reductive technology in that they are created my the "irreversible decrease" in original mass of the object. in analyzing stone artifacts, scientists are able to determine the source of the stone, how the tool was created, and how it was used.

there are three primary parts: the hammerstone, the core, and the flake.
As the name implies, the hammerstone is the stone forcibly hit against the core which produces a break-off piece called a flake. hammerstones are usually made of a harder material such as quartz whereas cores are predominantly "softer" stones such as obsidian or other silica based rock. When struck, a flake breaks off along a fault line partially determined by the angle of the strike. as a result, a flake as several identifiable features: a platform (portion of original exterior where the core is struck, a bulge or bulb of percussion which is a direct result of the force of the blow and sometimes ripple marks can be seen radiating out in the direction of the blow as the force of the blow caused energy to travel through the stone until it reach the outer part of the stone whereby causing the flake to separate from the core.

it sounds rather technical but when we were given the opportunity to try out stone knapping ourselves, the attributes were more readily easy to see.

Contrary to our former belief, stone knapping is hard!! we worked with obsidian which is relatively brittle and very sharp. It was extremely difficult to get a perfect flake and to be honest I wasnt entirely sure what a perfect flake looks like. They all looked good to me. It wasn't until I'd been working on it awhile that I started to kinda get the hang of it. Its kinda like sculpting in a way i guess. You have to stare at a rock and decide what it is you want to create. You cant just start hacking away at it cause then you end up with just a bunch of broken rocks.

we then had to sort them upon our return from class into separate piles of flakes, cores, scatter, tools/flakes untouched, tools/flakes retouched, and then into proximal/medial/distal parts of flakes. Classifying the stones was really the most difficult part and only lots of practice will make it easier