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.
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