Friday March 7th 2008 a Day off!

So i dont know why pictures may not be showing up...grr, My guess is as good as yours, I will try and figure it out.

Today is our day off. I slept in until a whopping 7:00 am. Last night I went out for drinks and dinner with Richard and Mary Ann. We drank red wine, which I managed to not cringe at, and ate at a restaurant at the Meridian down the street. Richard and Maryann tried desperately to get me to try cheese. It started with an H I think and it looked like roasted marshmellows on top of grilled vegetables. I told them that if I came to my blog and wrote that I tried cheese and liked it, that a huge part of my identity would be lost…that no one back home would know who I am anymore. Well, I didn’t need to try it, there were little pieces of cheese in my food and within one bite I realized it, and wanted to vomit. For me, cheese is more than just a food that I don’t like the taste of…if I can taste any hint of it (and I will be the first to admit that there are probably times when it is in my food and I can’t taste it…but if you are preparing my food and you miscalculate the point at which I will detect cheese, I’m sorry I can’t finish it)- in the event that I can taste it, it is like having an instant gag reflex. My stomach ties itself in knots…it is like dining turbulance. Boo Cheese.

Okay back to more interesting things…. Richard is going back to the states today and wont be back until close to when I am leaving. It is really amusing this year…there are a lot of new people on board, especially girls who live in the apartments with me, and so suddenly I am the person to which questions are directed. This was really something I did not foresee happening, and for a few reasons. First of all I didn’t realize how many different specialists there were going to be here, though it makes sense since half of the team is down in Luxor this season. Also, I didn’t realize that I actually knew that much about living in Egypt. I was only here for 5 weeks last season, but it turns out I learned quite a bit about the ins and outs of this project, navigation through the city, and the standard do’s and don’ts. One girl said that she didn’t think her arabic would ever be is good as mine…this too is laughable. While I have gotten better and picked up more arabic, I am pretty sure that she just keeps hearing me say the same 3 or 4 phrases to everyone and with that, I am cleverishly letting on that I know much more than I do! My cousin Melanie I think would really like working on an international team like this. Perhaps not an archaeological one, but the amount of languages being thrown around is head spinning. In addition to arabic, I’ve started learning Japanese. Polish and Swedish are other languages that you can hear bouncing off the mosquito laden walls.

Speaking of mosquitos….I’m conviced that my blood type is either B or AB. If you have a B in your blood (I just had the mental image of a bumble bee drowning in a river of blood)…anyway, if there is a B in your bloodTYPE (there we go) apparently bugs, particularly mosquitos, choose you last for a fix. In the mornings when I ask how everyone slept, they all chime in about restless nights fending off mosquitos. I haven’t gotten bit at all yet…at least not mosquitos. A little bit by bed bugs ( I know gross right?) I need to get some euclyptus to spray on my bed to fend off those suckers.

Yesterday on the field we finally have all area leaders (Ana, Mark Lehner, Peter, and Amelia). This finally meant organization! Me and this other Egyptian girl who had completed the field school last year, Noha, went with the four of them to talk more about the site, the goals of season and how it ties to the Workers Town settlement where they have been excavating the part 20 years. Me being the over-achiever that I am, had already read everything I could get my hands on for Khentkawes (reports from 2005 and 2007 excavations by Mark, as well as the 1930s excavation reports by Salim Hassan, and the early excavation reports by Reisner of Menkenre’s Valley Temple and Temple Town). Since I had done so, I knew everything that Mark was saying (in addition to knowing that a majority of his information was taken straight from the intro of the Hassan Report). So if he blanked on a date, or a piece of information, I was first to interject and answer….I tried to balance coming across as obnoxious with coming across as prepared…prepared was what I was going for…but no one likes a know it all. I don’t really care though…as Richard said at dinner last night…the one with all of the knowledge wins.

I am not sure who I will be working under for the next few weeks. So far, my job is to work on the areas that were mapped in 2005. Unorganization seems to be the common denominator for digs, at least here…and seeing as though this is the second most funded project next to Catal Hyuk, that is a bit unnerving. But apparently in the 2005 season the areas built along the the causeway of Khenkawes Pyramid (typically pyramids have associated with them either towns that housed the mortuary cults that would carry out daily purification and offering rituals for the deceased tomb owner, settlements associated with the construction of the tomb and pyramid, or any combination of this depending on when building was occuring and when it finished). No one really knows what was going on at Khentkawes (KKT), but its stratigraphic link to the Workers Town site associated with Menkenre, and the settlement site along Menkenre’s valley temple is really important to resconstructing the ways in which these sub communities came together and functioned together within a state level operation under a pharaoh…this is about as well as I can sum it up on the surface, though I assure you its very complicated…I mean I spent a year and a half researching the Worker’s Town site alone, for my thesis…so to summarize when there is so much detail seems nearly impossible and a waste of time….it basically boils down to identifying relationships between different settlement sites on the Giza Plateau….chronological and functional relationships. Were the communities kept separate? Was there interaction? Did KKT reign as a Pharoah? How can we tell? Plus there is just a lot of other weird stuff going on that needs explaining. Here is a plan for the site overall, from a birds eye view.




Anyway…so back to my job for the next week or so…We unbackfilled some squares (about 4-6 10mx10m squares), beginning at the western edge of KKT’s causeway and extended south. Now these squares have only been mapped (so drawn to scale from a birds eye view). Nothing has been excavated, so we don’t have any sketches in profile, or revealing layers. However, what happened in the 2005 season was that they tried to map as much as possible and in doing so failed to assign all proper feature numbers and to fill out all the information on feature forms. I've started basically at where the town turns south.

Archaeological feature or context: any single action whether it leaves a positive or negative record within a stratigraphic sequence is known as a context or feature. Can consist of a deposit, cut, coffin, structures, artifacts, timbers, walls, etc.

For every feature or context, a form needs to be filled out. They are super detailed, asking about material, color, composition, measurements, extent of feature, measurement of bricks if applicable, orientation..anything that you see you basically have to write down and then you have to link it to all other associated contexts, for example if a wall abutts another wall, you have to lay it out in a sequential matrix. And of course, you have to draw everything.



Many people hate feature forms…who wants to be doing paperwork when you could be digging more right? Well, I guess I don’t mind paper work…but I also know that I am learning a lot by completing these forms. I had no idea how to figure out which wall was built first, and how bricks were laid before doing this. Also, I feel like I am getting a much more thorough understanding of the site and what’s going on more than everyone else who is just trying to piece together information based on sketching more and more squares. Like I said though, it should take me about a week to catch up on the 2005 paperwork…and then we will move to new squares. I may get to map out some squares by myself I was told, but I don’t really want to do that because I feel like I am terrible at drawing…and no one should rely on me to do that very well. I think a lot of my responsibilities will entail following other people around as they map, assigning feature numbers, and documenting them and cleaning them….it doesn’t sound all to thrilling but so far I don’t mind it….I walk around in my socks (can’t wear shoes or else you willl destroy what little is left) carrying large maps, pencils and pens sticking our of my hair in every which direction, and I write and draw and think….even if the work gets boring after a while, I still get to be off in my own little world at least.

Okay..it's Friday and 91 degrees here...I think I am going to walk down to the meridian and see about getting in the pool. Hope you are all enjoying the snow in Michigan :)