The archaeological community was introduced to non stop dancing Kelly last night. MY legs are acheyingly sore this morning. Owwww. Since it is the end of the excavation season we held a huge party at our apartment last night. It was really great to see everyone together in a more relaxed environment. Upon washing and letting my hair down, a colleague came up to me and said, “Oh my god you look so different…you look like a girl!” Ha, I was not quite sure how to respond to that. But it really just goes to show what happens when you turn up not wearing the same dirty clothes and with a clean face and sandless hair. At first the party was a little quite and everyone just harbored exhaustion behind their eyes…but all it took was the right music selection and everyone was pepped and laughter and good times were shared. And by right music selection, I mean ABBA. Of course my demands for some good eighties jams were well received too…however when I put on the Final Countdown the Swedes bowed their head in shame wondering why Americans only enjoy the worst music to come out of Sweden. We also listened to some Guns and Roses and when a group of people started singing a verse of Paradise City prematurely I shouted that they were all amateurs. The repsonse was, “When were you even born?” When I said 1985 there was a groan at both my baby status and my imappropriate affection for a musical decade I was barely apart of. Some people brought guests to the party who weren’t apart of the team, and I was quite flattered when introductions were going around. Jessica was explaining who everyone was and what their jobs were and she got to me and said, “This is Kelly, she keeps everyone happy.” Haha though I don’t know if that was because my performance as an excavator wasn’t worthy of being mentioned…nah I think it was just to change up descrription from “digger, digger, lab rat, digger, digger, lab rat.”

For the night I had managed to get my hands on a fifth of really really good scotish whiskey that will inevitably ruin my ability to drink other whiskey for the rest of my life…not because it made me sick or anything, but because it was so amazingly delicious I don’t know that I can go back to another brand of lesser quality. But I will also probably never be able to really afford nice whiskey either so I will nurse this stuff as though it is an immortal elixir.

Other silly aspects of the night included seeing how many different languages we could translate the word “Spider Pink”. If you are familiar with the Simpsons you would know what Spider Pink is. You need not go far to find at least 6 or 7 different ways to say it, Italian being the most complicated. I am really hoping that I can retain some of the British slang and common words. The change is just nice. I’ve stopped using the word friend and replaced it with mate, stopped using the word apartment and replaced it with flat, and of course have accepted great phrases like, “I can’t be bothered” and “That is rubbish.” I have also nearly eliminated the word “pants” and replaced it with trousers. To the Brits, pants means underwear…but not just any underwear…it more so means the biggest, grimmest set of granny panties you can imagine. So when I say pants this is immediately what they think of and nearly start laughing to tears. After having done a load of laundry and showing up on site, I was told what a difference it makes to put on some clean clothes. My response was, “Oh yeah this is the first time I’ve changed my pants in a week.” Working the other way, though I’m an American minority, the English call their erasers rubbers, so I find myself giggling at some of the phrases that spin from that especially since erasers are a very important thing to have on site. “Oh my rubber is gettng pretty dirty, does any one have a rubber I can borrow.” Things like this. The use and reuse and borrowing of dirty rubbers. The Brits also don’t quite understand “That’s what she said” humor, so I’ve managed to phase that out despite the fact that it was so ingrained into my speech from college guys. Though from time to time when someone does look at some of the architecture and says, “Oh my god look how massive that thing is,” I do wait for just a second, anticipating someone to chime in with a “that’s what she said,” however I restrain myself from actually saying it out loud.

Before the party yesterday, team Menkenre Vestibule spent the morning going over all plans and paper work trying to find the holes in our work that needed to be completed. With said holes, we also spent the morning frantically running about the site, tape measures and level meters in hand getting the final values needed. Before such scrambling for last minute information though, we had a lovely breakfast at the Mena House resort. An all you can eat buffet of the freshest fruit and most splendid array of breads and pastries. I wish there were no consequences to eating a gluttoness amount of pastries. But for an end of season reward for hard work, I will ignore the truth. Life’s short- shovel in the flakey sweetness.


Here are some photos of the squares that I spent this season working on. Here are my beautiful fieldstone walls, of which I had to measure all of the stones and plan the details of.







Here are pictures from the Valley Temple where I was able to excavate the in situ pottery (see the holes where said digging took place).





The hope is that we will finish up everything needed for the site by next Wednesday. After that I get to crawl in the dark dampness that is the on site lab, lose my tan and work on lithics for the remainder of my time here. And by learn lithics I also partially mean learning how to dance the way they do in Greece from Merina and Mary Ann, both seasoned veterans having worked in Cyprus. Merina is trying to get me on the permit for Catalhoyuk in Turkey for next summer….it’s only the largest and most well known neolithic site, no big deal (it would be an amazing deal…the projects budget is even larger than this one and they are total work Nazis…their lab is open 24 hours a day and every one just works works works, really sounds like my kind of place indeed!)

Okay that will conclude my updates for now…