We wrapped up our short lab season yesterday. Boxes of the sorted, seived, photographed, and re-organized material are stacked neatly (for the moment) along the wall, as we prepare to move to the field phase of the project. The lab will continue while we're in the field, but I won't be in it. I love directing this project, and I love excavation (difficult to be an archaeologist if you don't like getting into the dirt), but I also love spending quality time getting to know the bone, shell, and stone tools that are coming out of the site at a rapid pace. One of the things I didn't anticipate when I became a site director, was how much i would miss being in the lab. Fortunately, I have a great crew. They came out weeks early to help with lab work, and they've really moved the project forward. Hannah, Sara, Val, Kathryn, and Clancey are the early lab crew this year. They are students from Texas, California, and DC - undergrads and grad students. |
The lab also gives everyone (crew and me) a chance to re-train our brains in what to look for when we're digging. It's often not easy to distinguish a stone artifact from the small bits of cave that litter the site. To make our job more interesting, the types of artifacts we're finding are getting super-small. The scale on this photo is 2mm! (yes - it is intentionally made in that shape.) Spending 2 weeks picking these finds out of the sieved material (as Kathryn's doing above, and everyone's doing below), is a great way to prepare for recognizing these things as they come out of the ground. |