Now that I'm back in the states, I have become aware that our pictures that we spent forever uploading never actually uploaded. As a result I will attempt to go back through and add some (more for posterity sake than anything else). Andrew has most of the ones we originally thought we posted so I will have to wait till the rest return but until then I will try to go through and re-vamp everything :) I will also be updating about our adventures in the Bale Mountains, Wondo Genet, Axum, and Harar, and hopefully the others will write about lalibella and Gondor. So be sure to check back over the next few weeks for more stories and pictures.
As for myself, it is a delight to be back in the states. :) It is a rainy day on campus (tornado warning in fact) so hopefully I will be able to get a good jumpstart on finally unpacking and uploading/editing photos.
Cheers!
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
The End. but not really.
Today was our last day at Moche Barago. Tommy and I were still excavating in our units and Hannah and Sebastion were busy drawing and mapping the profiles before we closed the units for the season. It was an extremely relaxed atmosphere and was a wonderful conclusion to our excavations. As apparently there always is on the last day of excavations, there were many interesting finds including plant remains Christopher found a quartz core in his unit and possibly a human tooth (I found that one)!! Overall, things look to be very promising and exciting for next year :) After lunch it started storming while we were in the cave and it was really peaceful listening to the rain and the thunder and the water cascading over the waterfall. We haven’t had enough rain for the waterfall in several weeks so it was a nice change. Things up at camp were alittle more hectic with everyone packing up the research tent and inventorying all the supplies. Andrew was sent on a mission to collect soil samples from the mountain with Kochito. At the summit, 2900 meters up, the views were incredible and were well worth the exhausting climb up. They began taking soil samples all the way down the mountain every 100 meters until they reached camp. Along the way they stopped for some photo ops on a rock formation that is believed to have been used for human sacrifices. (Dr. Ralf and Andrew jokingly threatened to sacrifice me when we went surveying up by it last week. Haha. Not). They than began hurrying down with the approaching storm bearing down. Dinner was delightful. Pasta with egg salad and tomatoes Yumm! We leave tomorrow for the Bale mountains to go on a hiking/horseback riding trek. We are unbelievably excited to start travelling around Ethiopia (we are following the historic route) but I am admittedly kinda sad to stop excavating. I really enjoyed it and I hope I will get the opportunity to do it again soon.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
"Shooting!"
Jessica and I alternated excavating and learning how to use the Total Station. Hannah was an excellent instructor and I was really excited to learn. The overall technique was relatively simple but it was important to always pay attention because the slightest distraction could cause a measurement (i.e. rod height or prism standard) to be over-looked and then all of the following data will be incorrect. It was a long day of gunning but it was very successful and I’m glad I got to learn how to do it.
Tonight it started monsooning during dinner. Ok, so maybe not actually monsooning, but it was pretty close. We all got completely soaked walking back to our tents (except Andrew cause he was smart and wore his North Face) and Elfinish (our cook) was wonderful and walked us each individually under an umbrella so we wouldn’t get additionally waterlogged. It is thundering and lightning pretty bad and there was an extremely loud flash/bang of a lightning strike a few minutes ago. You could literally feel the shocks move right through your bones. It was rather unnerving. Hopefully it wont be raining tomorrow!!
Tonight it started monsooning during dinner. Ok, so maybe not actually monsooning, but it was pretty close. We all got completely soaked walking back to our tents (except Andrew cause he was smart and wore his North Face) and Elfinish (our cook) was wonderful and walked us each individually under an umbrella so we wouldn’t get additionally waterlogged. It is thundering and lightning pretty bad and there was an extremely loud flash/bang of a lightning strike a few minutes ago. You could literally feel the shocks move right through your bones. It was rather unnerving. Hopefully it wont be raining tomorrow!!
Monday, March 7, 2011
"...but it's green!"
Today we continued excavating. H9 is starting to become exceptionally interesting. I am predominantly finding lithic artifacts made of a stone called Rhyolite (“archaeological kryptonite!” as Lindsay calls it). It is a volcanic stone of greenish coloring and it is really exciting to spot because it’s so different from the usual obsidian artifacts. I have found many flakes, a few blades, scrapers, etc. It is really interesting to find this material since there is no local source (that they know of). I am looking forward to continuing to excavate this unit as it keeps getting more interesting the deeper we dig.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
We're gonna have a dance party!
Today Dr. Brandt, Hannah, Andrea, Sebastion, and Tommy went to the obsidian quarry 20km away. We all wanted to go so we drew cards. The highest cards got to go. I only had a Jack and Andrew got the Joker (haha) so obvi we didnt get to go. Tommy lucked out and got a King so he got to go. They came back tired and exhausted to a scene that apparently reminded them of Lord of the Flies. In reality it was just us all super hyper on coffee making up drinking songs and dances. Love sunday nights.
"We're gonna have a dance party, a dance party, a dance party,
We're gonna have a dance party, with Elfinish tonight.
We're gonna have a dance party, a dance party, a dance party,
We're gonna have a dance party, we call it Sunday Night!!"
"We're gonna have a dance party, a dance party, a dance party,
We're gonna have a dance party, with Elfinish tonight.
We're gonna have a dance party, a dance party, a dance party,
We're gonna have a dance party, we call it Sunday Night!!"
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Souvenir total: 3
Today we all got coffee pots!! They are in the traditional Wolayta design with long necks and round bottoms. They had gorgeous designs on them and when we asked one of the local men who work with us what say he laughed and said “15 bir”. Literally that’s what they say – Haha! Mine actually says “gator” and “lizard” on it which I think is quite fitting since we’re Gators.
Our other souvenirs are spear tips which we bought from a local blacksmith here on the mountain. They are really wicked looking and I can’t wait to put them up as decoration when I return home. We also have gotten little woven baskets that one of the local elders made for us. They look like the little baskets that would hold cobras in movies.
photo by Andrew
Our other souvenirs are spear tips which we bought from a local blacksmith here on the mountain. They are really wicked looking and I can’t wait to put them up as decoration when I return home. We also have gotten little woven baskets that one of the local elders made for us. They look like the little baskets that would hold cobras in movies.
photo by Andrew
Bless the rainsdown in Africa...
Today while laying in my tent listening to the rain pitter-patter on the tent roof I finally began to understand the allure travel to Africa has held for foreigners over the years. The ability to be in such a completely foreign place yet feel at home is exceedingly difficult to describe. The people have been wonderful and the scenery is breathtaking, especially the sunsets. I think that perhaps the most difficult part of returning home is the knowledge that my stories and descriptions and photos will be thoroughly inadequate in explaining the true experience that this trip has been. Only those of us who have been here and present for it will truly understand what it is like.
What we are doing here...
Life in camp has settled into a set routine. Wake up around 7:15, breakfast at 7:30, head to the cave at 8. Excavate until tea time at 10:30 then continue excavating until 12:30 when we break for lunch. We return to the cave at 1:30 and continue excavating until 4:30. At this time we return to camp and have free time to shower, work on cataloguing, and sometimes for hiking. We then usually all pull our chairs outside the tents and relax and chat while watching the sunset. Andrea will play patty cake games with the kids and Sebastian and Andrew will usually play volleyball or soccer with them. Dinner is around 7:30 and then we are usually all ready for bed by 9.
As far as excavations are going, everything has been smooth. We have all been working in specific areas and are getting a very good feel for our individual units…
(photo by Andrew)
Excavation Unit Breakdown
C9 – Lindsay:
Excavation unit C9 has been very interesting from the start. It dates as of right now to about 40,000-30,000 years ago, in the R group. We have found a large hearth feature that included three stratigraphic units! In excavating we use both artificial (arbitrary) and stratigraphic levels. This means that we create levels based on both the natural stratigraphy as well as in 5cm levels, by doing this we can be more precise in our excavation and where the artifacts and features are located. We are finding many artifacts which are vertically oriented in the SE corner of the unit which has led the team to hypothesize either a pit feature or an area which may indicate fluvial interaction. We have found a few points in the unit which is very exciting, possibly Levallois points as well as some cores. The retouch on the points is fascinating to look at and examine something that hasn’t been seen in many thousands of years. Most of the artifacts are obsidian, a black volcanic stone except for a few chert pieces that we find very rarely. I am working with one of the German students Sebastian (and as he wanted us to add, of Polish ancestry of course). Sebastian doubles as an excavator as well as one of the Total Station operators so he stays quite busy. When he excavates I am usually recording and handling the paperwork that it entails. When I excavate he is usually operating the Total Station so I do my own recording as well as excavating.
M15 – Sarah & Andrew:
We began excavation in this unit right after removing the backdirt. It is the newest and shallowest unit, only 45cm deep. The artifacts are believed to date to around 10,000 years ago, which is either late Paleolithic or early Holocene materials. There are an extreme number of artifacts present, predominantly debitage and it is hypothesized to possibly be a waste pit feature. We are working with the French archaeologist Clement who specializes in lithics from this time period. It has been very fascinating learning from him and he gets so excited when a particularly intriguing artifact is uncovered that it adds to the enjoyment of excavating. Andrew and I have been switching off excavating and recording which keeps us both busy in the excavation process. Recording has been a challenge as we are plotting hundreds of artifacts a day, usually 70-80 at a time. We enjoy keeping Hannah (one of the German grad students) busy at the Total Station.
H9 NE – Sarah:
After Clermont left, we closed M15 and I was reassigned to the BXA unit H9, northeast quadrant. Here, Lindsey had previously been excavating the fluvial channel. A pedestal of sediment remained and I was given the task of removing the pedestal to expose the channel bottom. The sediment in the channel is artifactually sterile so it wasn’t too difficult. It took several days for me to fully expose the channel bottom and in a way it was like sculpting, having to carefully expose the fragile clay border which is the edge of the channel. Once the pedestal was reduced and the channel bottom fully exposed I was able to continue excavating the unit. Here is where it got difficult. It was kind of like a maze meets a puzzle meets a Rubix cube. Seriously. As I excavated, a large burrow (L58) appeared in the NW corner and progressed to the SE where it branched into both a southerly and easterly direction(from above it had the vague outline of a B-12 bomber. The southern branch bisected another burrow which coincidentally happened to be located directly above a third burrow (L69) which we discovered when it collapsed onto itself. The burrows continued outside the boundaries of the quad but we suspect them to double back and connect with a burrow appearing in H9 SE. There are two other unnamed burrows located at the edges of the unit which we have not yet plotted or fully excavated. It is very confusing with burrows because they are assigned different levels and their own stratigraphic units. Due to this, I was at one point working in three stratigraphic units and three levels at the same time and it was getting rather hectic and difficult to keep it all straight. Yesterday we finally decided to close down this unit because of time restraints and the ongoing difficulty with the levels (we were going to have to plot in a new stratigraphic unit and additional level making it four strats and four levels in one quarter meter unit). Overall I was slightly sad to stop working in my unit. I had embraced it as a challenge and as it the oldest unit at the site, I was working in sediments dated to between 48,000 – 55,000 years ago which I thought was really really awesome. At the bottom of the channel was a hearth feature so I predominantly found charcoal and bone fragments as well as a few pieces of lithics including several basalt cores, a buren spall and a few very nice retouched points. I am to begin working with Jessica in her unit (H9 – SE directly next to mine) tomorrow.
N42 E39 – Jessica
For a week I excavated in a “geo trench” whose main function is to track the geological activities in the cave during different environmental stages. Erich and Ollie had a theory that a fluvial channel (stream) was present in the cave at various points in time. This “stream theory” could be supported by a specific formation of rocks within a strat layer, so my job was to uncover them. I had to dig around the rocks and carefully keep them in place (which became an extremely painstaking process). At the end I removed an approx. 20 cm deep layer with 60 rocks fully exposed on top of the soil. After the rocks were uncovered, the pattern showed an obvious formation (not as obvious to me as to the trained eye) revealing the direction of the stream. Through the process I found artifacts as well: small obsidian flakes and cores as well as a few chunks of charcoal. Each individual rock was then mapped using the total station (more than 600 shots were taken –many thanks to Hannah - to complete the job). Although my unit’s main function was not for the archaeological finds, it helped to create a more precise image of the environment of the people who lived in the shelter thousands of years ago.
Surveying! – Lindsey & Tommy
We are the Survey King and Queen! After breakfast, we go with Dr. Ralf and our Ethiopian guide and round up supplies for our trek up or down the mountain depending on the day. Our goal is to find exposed lithics to determine where the best archaeological sites are. Tilled fields are the most likely places to find lithics so that is where we focus our searches. When we approach a field that appears to be promising, we ask our guide to go and ask the local farmers if it is okay for us to enter their fields to start our search. Most of the time we find the ground littered with TONS of artifacts. You can’t help but feel awestruck. If we end up at a site that has a representative assemblage, then we mark the site on the GPS and bag the assemblage to be accessed at a later time. After this, we will retrieve our survey forms and begin to take notes about the landscape, the types of artifacts (usually distinct diagnostic features), and of course the date/time. After a few hours of hiking, we break for lunch, which is a time to talk to the local people and exchange a few laughs. Finally, we head back to the camp completely exhausted and with a fan club in tow. It’s awesome!
Total Station – Hannah:
Hello everyone, you guys don’t know me, I’m a German graduate student and am Site Supervisor and gunner. I’m responsible for processing the total station data. As a Site Supervisor I am in charge of the excavations when Dr. Brandt is not around and I am supposed to keep an eye on the students and help them out if they have any problems; but they are doing a very good job on their excavation units so there is not much for me to do in that regard. As a gunner I am using one of our two total stations and am responsible for the other one as well, which is run by either Sebastian, my fellow student from Cologne, or by Minassie our Ethiopian liaison, my dear friend.
A total station is a surveying tool, used usually in construction works, which you can set up in an existing measurement system and plot new points spatially. We use it to plot the artifact locations and to map the levels and the strat units. In order to set this up, we use existing control points on the cave wall to resection (align) the total station in our measurement system, then we are able to plot the artifacts in 3 dimensions and use the collected data to map our finds in 3D in the GIS program (Dr. Erich Fisher is doing that). Dr. Fisher has already created a 3D model of the rock shelter and in addition to that, I mapped the entrance of the cave this year so that our model will be more complete and we are better able to understand processes that lead to the site formation. Every day after work I have to download and process the data and check it for any mistakes that might have happened during the days work. The actual shooting of the artifacts is not very difficult, though it is demanding work, because you have to concentrate very hard not to make any mistakes, because then at worst the data is lost. So the Students are keeping me busy with collecting hundreds of artifacts a day (today I mapped 700 artifacts), M15 was especially taxing while Clement was there and now Andrew and Christopher have taken his place in being my major employee.
Cataloguing – Everyone is involved in cataloguing which is perhaps the most time consuming. It is also important for keeping track of all of the thousands of artifacts we find at the site. Every evening we are busy numbering bags, putting info cards in them, and uploading data entries and photos to the main database. Although tedious, we make it fun by reading books aloud (Harry Potter!) or listening to music which makes it all go by much faster.
As far as excavations are going, everything has been smooth. We have all been working in specific areas and are getting a very good feel for our individual units…
(photo by Andrew)
Excavation Unit Breakdown
C9 – Lindsay:
Excavation unit C9 has been very interesting from the start. It dates as of right now to about 40,000-30,000 years ago, in the R group. We have found a large hearth feature that included three stratigraphic units! In excavating we use both artificial (arbitrary) and stratigraphic levels. This means that we create levels based on both the natural stratigraphy as well as in 5cm levels, by doing this we can be more precise in our excavation and where the artifacts and features are located. We are finding many artifacts which are vertically oriented in the SE corner of the unit which has led the team to hypothesize either a pit feature or an area which may indicate fluvial interaction. We have found a few points in the unit which is very exciting, possibly Levallois points as well as some cores. The retouch on the points is fascinating to look at and examine something that hasn’t been seen in many thousands of years. Most of the artifacts are obsidian, a black volcanic stone except for a few chert pieces that we find very rarely. I am working with one of the German students Sebastian (and as he wanted us to add, of Polish ancestry of course). Sebastian doubles as an excavator as well as one of the Total Station operators so he stays quite busy. When he excavates I am usually recording and handling the paperwork that it entails. When I excavate he is usually operating the Total Station so I do my own recording as well as excavating.
M15 – Sarah & Andrew:
We began excavation in this unit right after removing the backdirt. It is the newest and shallowest unit, only 45cm deep. The artifacts are believed to date to around 10,000 years ago, which is either late Paleolithic or early Holocene materials. There are an extreme number of artifacts present, predominantly debitage and it is hypothesized to possibly be a waste pit feature. We are working with the French archaeologist Clement who specializes in lithics from this time period. It has been very fascinating learning from him and he gets so excited when a particularly intriguing artifact is uncovered that it adds to the enjoyment of excavating. Andrew and I have been switching off excavating and recording which keeps us both busy in the excavation process. Recording has been a challenge as we are plotting hundreds of artifacts a day, usually 70-80 at a time. We enjoy keeping Hannah (one of the German grad students) busy at the Total Station.
H9 NE – Sarah:
After Clermont left, we closed M15 and I was reassigned to the BXA unit H9, northeast quadrant. Here, Lindsey had previously been excavating the fluvial channel. A pedestal of sediment remained and I was given the task of removing the pedestal to expose the channel bottom. The sediment in the channel is artifactually sterile so it wasn’t too difficult. It took several days for me to fully expose the channel bottom and in a way it was like sculpting, having to carefully expose the fragile clay border which is the edge of the channel. Once the pedestal was reduced and the channel bottom fully exposed I was able to continue excavating the unit. Here is where it got difficult. It was kind of like a maze meets a puzzle meets a Rubix cube. Seriously. As I excavated, a large burrow (L58) appeared in the NW corner and progressed to the SE where it branched into both a southerly and easterly direction(from above it had the vague outline of a B-12 bomber. The southern branch bisected another burrow which coincidentally happened to be located directly above a third burrow (L69) which we discovered when it collapsed onto itself. The burrows continued outside the boundaries of the quad but we suspect them to double back and connect with a burrow appearing in H9 SE. There are two other unnamed burrows located at the edges of the unit which we have not yet plotted or fully excavated. It is very confusing with burrows because they are assigned different levels and their own stratigraphic units. Due to this, I was at one point working in three stratigraphic units and three levels at the same time and it was getting rather hectic and difficult to keep it all straight. Yesterday we finally decided to close down this unit because of time restraints and the ongoing difficulty with the levels (we were going to have to plot in a new stratigraphic unit and additional level making it four strats and four levels in one quarter meter unit). Overall I was slightly sad to stop working in my unit. I had embraced it as a challenge and as it the oldest unit at the site, I was working in sediments dated to between 48,000 – 55,000 years ago which I thought was really really awesome. At the bottom of the channel was a hearth feature so I predominantly found charcoal and bone fragments as well as a few pieces of lithics including several basalt cores, a buren spall and a few very nice retouched points. I am to begin working with Jessica in her unit (H9 – SE directly next to mine) tomorrow.
N42 E39 – Jessica
For a week I excavated in a “geo trench” whose main function is to track the geological activities in the cave during different environmental stages. Erich and Ollie had a theory that a fluvial channel (stream) was present in the cave at various points in time. This “stream theory” could be supported by a specific formation of rocks within a strat layer, so my job was to uncover them. I had to dig around the rocks and carefully keep them in place (which became an extremely painstaking process). At the end I removed an approx. 20 cm deep layer with 60 rocks fully exposed on top of the soil. After the rocks were uncovered, the pattern showed an obvious formation (not as obvious to me as to the trained eye) revealing the direction of the stream. Through the process I found artifacts as well: small obsidian flakes and cores as well as a few chunks of charcoal. Each individual rock was then mapped using the total station (more than 600 shots were taken –many thanks to Hannah - to complete the job). Although my unit’s main function was not for the archaeological finds, it helped to create a more precise image of the environment of the people who lived in the shelter thousands of years ago.
Surveying! – Lindsey & Tommy
We are the Survey King and Queen! After breakfast, we go with Dr. Ralf and our Ethiopian guide and round up supplies for our trek up or down the mountain depending on the day. Our goal is to find exposed lithics to determine where the best archaeological sites are. Tilled fields are the most likely places to find lithics so that is where we focus our searches. When we approach a field that appears to be promising, we ask our guide to go and ask the local farmers if it is okay for us to enter their fields to start our search. Most of the time we find the ground littered with TONS of artifacts. You can’t help but feel awestruck. If we end up at a site that has a representative assemblage, then we mark the site on the GPS and bag the assemblage to be accessed at a later time. After this, we will retrieve our survey forms and begin to take notes about the landscape, the types of artifacts (usually distinct diagnostic features), and of course the date/time. After a few hours of hiking, we break for lunch, which is a time to talk to the local people and exchange a few laughs. Finally, we head back to the camp completely exhausted and with a fan club in tow. It’s awesome!
Total Station – Hannah:
Hello everyone, you guys don’t know me, I’m a German graduate student and am Site Supervisor and gunner. I’m responsible for processing the total station data. As a Site Supervisor I am in charge of the excavations when Dr. Brandt is not around and I am supposed to keep an eye on the students and help them out if they have any problems; but they are doing a very good job on their excavation units so there is not much for me to do in that regard. As a gunner I am using one of our two total stations and am responsible for the other one as well, which is run by either Sebastian, my fellow student from Cologne, or by Minassie our Ethiopian liaison, my dear friend.
A total station is a surveying tool, used usually in construction works, which you can set up in an existing measurement system and plot new points spatially. We use it to plot the artifact locations and to map the levels and the strat units. In order to set this up, we use existing control points on the cave wall to resection (align) the total station in our measurement system, then we are able to plot the artifacts in 3 dimensions and use the collected data to map our finds in 3D in the GIS program (Dr. Erich Fisher is doing that). Dr. Fisher has already created a 3D model of the rock shelter and in addition to that, I mapped the entrance of the cave this year so that our model will be more complete and we are better able to understand processes that lead to the site formation. Every day after work I have to download and process the data and check it for any mistakes that might have happened during the days work. The actual shooting of the artifacts is not very difficult, though it is demanding work, because you have to concentrate very hard not to make any mistakes, because then at worst the data is lost. So the Students are keeping me busy with collecting hundreds of artifacts a day (today I mapped 700 artifacts), M15 was especially taxing while Clement was there and now Andrew and Christopher have taken his place in being my major employee.
Cataloguing – Everyone is involved in cataloguing which is perhaps the most time consuming. It is also important for keeping track of all of the thousands of artifacts we find at the site. Every evening we are busy numbering bags, putting info cards in them, and uploading data entries and photos to the main database. Although tedious, we make it fun by reading books aloud (Harry Potter!) or listening to music which makes it all go by much faster.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Neche Sar Nat'l Park
We woke up early around 5:30 to the chanting sounds of the Christian orthodox and Mosque located on either side of our hotel. We didn’t have to be up till 6:45 but since we were awake, we decided to just get going and so we headed to Neche Sar to do the land part of the park. The entrance was very understated and it was easy to miss the dirt road located between a car repair shop and a primary school. A kilometer back was the actual entrance where we bought our tickets and picked up our armed guard (he sat in the back of the other landcruiser). We all got settled and we were off! Our trek began with a journey through dense forest where we saw and heard many baboons (Rafikii!) and then we entered into a more arid mountainous landscape turning the corner to a beautiful morning vista of the African plains at the base of the mountain next to the lake. We stopped for pictures and the chance to really take in the scenery as well as to imagine what the Paleo climate would have looked like. We continued up and up and over the mountains. At one point it was so steep that Lindsay and I both unconsciously sat up in that “anticipation for the drop of the roller-coaster” feeling but luckily it never came. In the highlands we saw zebras!! They stood out in such stark contrast with the bright green grass that it was really exciting to spot them.
We then journeyed down into the plains where we saw gazelles, dykers, dik diks, more baboons and a peacock (we think). All in all it was a fabulous four hour trip. Our return to Moche Borago was surprisingly smooth and at first we were confused until we realized just exactly how rough the terrain in the park had actually been. We were excited to return to the familiarity of our tents and it was surprising when one of us mentioned how good it was to be home and we all smiled knowing they meant “home” as in camp, not “home” as in America, and how true it was. We are to continue excavating tomorrow and its kind of sad to realize we will only be excavating about a week more.
For more, here is a wonderful article found on the new online magazine Face2Face Africa: Spotlight: NecheSar Nat'l Park
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