If you were an archeologist, where would you most like to dig?

A prompt from the one minute writer...I couldn't pass it up I had a life as an archaeologist once.

“Golly gee wilikers!” the phrase startles me out of my stupor for 7 weeks now I have come to this lecture and Bob promises every week that if some one does not show up by 7:15 we will leave without doing it inevitably someone does appear by 7:10 every week. The good thing is that it is someone different each week so only the four of us at the back have to hear the same stories and the same jokes every week. Bob is a great speaker. He really is but having had classes with him for a year and a half and having sat through this six previous times it makes it hard to stay awake. The air conditioning and the darkness help my sleepiness too. Lori elbow me in the ribs.

I look up to see my short covered butt displayed across the wall. The smeared dirt on the  butt of my tan shorts as I am standing on a ladder leaning into a square hold cut deep into the dirt wall. is not the picture I wanted to see as my eyes readjusted to the dim light. A new slide. Bob has switched things up and I dozed off. “we take pride in the fact that we are able to dig in ways that most archeologist don’t even dream of doing. Here an intern dig into a new square while standing on a ladder. She is 5 feet above the current floor of the main trench and this square will give us a better look into how the rock shelter was used.”

I can feel the blood rise into my cheeks. My butt on the screen was not what I wanted anyone to see. But I love 16-10. S16W10 is designation of the one meter by one meter square that I have been digging in for the past 4 weeks. When I stared it was about 30 centimeters deep It is now a 1 meter deep. It is unprecedented to dig in 2 centimeter level but the complexity of this site is also unprecedented. I may get through 1-2 level a day with mapping and photographing and journaling each part. We are saving so much of the dirt for study that we save all our soda and beer cans in large black bags to fill the holes for the fall and winter.

Bob see this shelter as some where that was used not only as a place to live but also as a place of worship he talks of “man-made dirt” and other fantastic thing that he thinks have happened there.   The dirt is interesting and we have a soil scientist who has never seen its like in the area. But the most impressive is the petrographs or rock paintings. The tell a story that I have now heard a dozen times he tells it for the new volunteers every week and he tells it here to help keep his community funding. Never the less I like hearing about He-Who-Wears-Human-Heads-As-Earrings and the ancestors cult shrine and Redhorn. Legends of this land and those who were here before us.  That is what it is all about It is why my finger nails are black with dirt. And in the end that is why Bob does this every week.

This is the side of archaeology most under grads never see it is the side of archaeology that most who dig for a living never see the preforming for money the keeping the grant alive. It has got to be done.