My first sentence must be devoted to congratulating a Miss Megan Goldenberg for getting accepted to her top choice grad school. I send you many hugs and kisses from afar.
Heh. I know I seem to blame everything on the lack of internet access, but also…just because I am in another country, doesn’t mean that I am on vacation, or that my workload isn’t the equivelent of a full time job back at home…I say this because no one else sits down and writes in a blog every day after work…they especially don’t write about work after getting off of work. I think last time when I came to Egypt, I never really looked at it as living abroad…I think given that I was only here for 5 weeks, and spare time was mainly devoted to tourist like activities, it certainly felt more like an extended vacation. Being in the field was a new endeavor and by the time I adjusted to it, it was time to return home. But it is different now…I am already adjusted, I am someone who helps others adjust…this is my home for right now. I don’t feel like a foriegner any more when I walk down the streets…I know enough arabic to greet all the familiar faces, I always know where I am going, how to get there…I don’t feel like a stranger to this country and that brings me to feeling really weird about keeping a blog this time around…I feel like it would be the same as me writing from Royal Oak everyday for the Egyptians to read…or me writing from Ann Arbor everyday for my family in Royal Oak to read. I guess that kind of brings me to the realization of what “home” means to me…I know a lot of people say home and start talking about family and warmth and blah blah blah…not that I don’t love my family or anything, but for me..I think home is where you feel comfortable on your own…home is where you don’t feel like a stranger...and I think it is a balance between your capacity to be independent and the extent to which you are involved in a community- whether its your actual city, your family, your colleagues, your friends. Meh maybe this isn’t really anything original or insightful….but again I don’t see you writing a blog for my peace of mind!
Aside from that rant (actually that was a fucking tangent…) I was originally going to say that we still don’t have internet in the small apartment, and therefore I think I will be one day behind in all my posts…like now its just after 9 pm…I didn’t want to sit at the villa on my computer really late, so I came back here after dinner and started blogging from microsoft word…which means that I wont post it until I go back to the villa some time tomorrow…hopefully first thing in the morning, but who knows with the wonky internet out here.
ANYWAY
So about today!
Today was a beautiful beautiful day ☺ Yours truly got to excavate her first feature! Now if you don’t retain detail…you might be saying, well…I thought she was going to be excavating this whole time, why is that a big deal…well I’m currently a learner…so I get to watch a lot, and follow up with all the detailed paper work on site…in general though, this season there is not a whole lot of digging going on. They more or less really botched things up last season and we are going through and fixing it….which is definitely an excellent experience, though when they first explained it, I was rather bummed that I would not get to dig as much as I really wanted to…as I have stated my workload as more or less been feature forms feature forms feature forms….today, as I sit in my square recording the dimensions of bricks in the exposed walls Mark Lehner says…”I don’t know…this feature is pretty peculiar…might want to see what’s going on underneathe…how about that Kelly, you think you might want to dig this up…” This being Mark Lehner and everything, perhaps it would have behooved me to play it cool…but I did no such thing….like a dog eager for a road trip, my eagerness was not contained…This was the first thing that was to be excavated on the site…no one has done any excavating yet, we have all been recording recording recording…so for ME to be asked to dig it, was nothing short of amaaaazzzing. Mark showed me some tricks of the trade for how to set up the grid so that I could do my drawings at 1:20 on the single feature sheets. A 1:20 site map, without being able to show you how big the grids are, just means super up close we’ll say. So I cleaned it with a brush, measured it, I mapped it, I photographed it, I took elevation measurements (where the feature sits above sea level), I made a sample bag for flotation, and then I excavated it!!! Sorry I can’t really tell you was “it” was….but it was pretty neat.
On a standard season (techinically this is supposed to be a study season where the crew is more focused on reporting, publishing) I would be able to constantly do this…unfortunately who knows how many other things I will actually get to dig….but, I will be doing a lot of excavation in India and it does look like I have the option of coming back here again next season, with them paying for me to come out here…at least covering the flight cost.
Another reason why I’m not so all about blogging these days is because I have been reading like a fiend…I only brought two books with me here and I’m already finished with one and well over 100 pages into the other…there’s an enligh bookstore downtown, perhaps I will go there some time soon. The villa also has a “library” of books people donate but they are known to be pretty trashy and terrible. I still have a good 500 pages left in Murakami though so that should hold me over a bit.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Friday, March 7, 2008
I know I already posted today...but I just want to say that spending the day by the pool at the hotel, reading was definitely the break I needed....I intend to spend every Friday at that hotel. It's a good thing I saw mostly everything, in terms of sites in Cairo the last time I was here, so I wont much be missing out!
Also, Richard left today and in doing so gave me his voda phone to use....so in the event of an emergency you can get a hold of me!
016-106-7301
It's a pay as you go phone though so don't count on me making frequent calls home or anything. I can get text messages though for the occasional check in. I consider it awesome mostly in case I get stranded somewhere downtown away from the Villa.
That's it.
Cheers!
Also, Richard left today and in doing so gave me his voda phone to use....so in the event of an emergency you can get a hold of me!
016-106-7301
It's a pay as you go phone though so don't count on me making frequent calls home or anything. I can get text messages though for the occasional check in. I consider it awesome mostly in case I get stranded somewhere downtown away from the Villa.
That's it.
Cheers!
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 :)
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 :)
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
I’m supposed to be working on database stuff but the internet is not working so I am just typing a blog entry on microsoft word. The days are going by quicker…I am learning more about methodology and things like how to use the camera equipment, how to use all the different logs we have etc. There is a lot of paperwork in archaeology. So far, I like working in the lab more than I like working in the field, which is not the standard amongst archaeologist from what I understand. The work in the field is still pretty early on though and our team isn’t even all here yet. Hopefully by Saturday or Sunday we will break off into groups, dividing the Khentkawes site into 4 parts and work on recording as we re-backfill. It is important to cover the squares as soon as possible so that the information can be as preserved as possible. Any amount of of rain or wind can do a lot of damage to a site, especially one like this that has been reduced to centimeters after decades of trampling humans, horses and camels. The destruction of the site comes after exposure from a 1930s excavation done by the University of Cairo.
Like I said, hopefully once we are more organized, I will be able to enjoy and appreciate everything that I do a bit more. As it stands, I’m given very little instruction and then left alone on the site…when I do finish whatever it was that I was told to do, I usually return to sketching until someone shows back up to tell me something else to do. The problem with this project is that it has gotten so big that the administrators, who are supposed to be working in the field, are constantly doing other operations…whether it be accomodating the chaotic schedules of everyone here, setting up the house, taking potential donors on tours, working out any type of legal issue, and I’m sure I’m only scratching the surface here. But like I said…a lot of time, especially because I’m alone, I have no idea what I am supposed to do next. Usually I just reread the London Manual of Archaeology or some of the previous reqports on excavations at Khentkawes.
If I continue to feel this uninspired about this kind of work, at least excavations only last until mid april and then I can turn to writing, something I actually enjoy doing….and if finish up writing earlier enough, I supposed I can either come home earlier, work in the lab, or just travel briefly…something who knows. I will still want to see what its like to work on another project before making other decisions about the direction I’m going with my career…though really, I think the discipline needs more people to shack up in labs and actually analyze more material as opposed to more people digging around…so much stuff has been dug up that has never been looked at.
I think uninspired was the word I used earlier…it pretty much sums me up right now. I’m tired, I’m frustrated…I’m someone passionate about information, knowledge, facts, data….but a majority of what I seem to be picking up is “fake it ‘til you make it.” I was told that I’m being thrown into this head first to see if I will sink or swim….seeing as though I am demanding more responsibilities (hence why I now work on the database in addition to survey, mapping and excavation), and the fact that I’m organizing the smaller tasks and being asked questions by students who already completed the field school when I’ve never been to a field school ever, and that I’m the first to voice exactly what I think is and is not time efficient, I would probably say that I am swimming just fine….one thing I was asked to do today though was to create labels and log any new features I saw on site…a new feature is just basically anything that changes or is different within a certain context…if it sounds kind of vague or abstract, that’s how I feel about it too. I was told to do this, and per usual all individuals in charge disappear. So I’m staring at squares, which already have some features labeled from previous seasons….and I have no idea what is and isn’t a distinguishable feature…for example if you are looking at a wall, and this is the with a few centimeters of sand removed from the surface, we aren’t talking deep levels here…how am I supposed to know whether or not a mudbrick wall, as I am seeing it, is one continuous feature, or if it is broken up by different rooms and buttressed by different installations? Are there ways to determine this? You betcha! Have I been taught…no…Is it obvious…in some areas yes, in some areas its really ambiguous…I’m a conservative archaeologist…I do things with certainty…when I explained that I don’t know, but that I want to know and I want to know how, I was told that archaeology is like poker…true analogy…that if I say it’s a new feature, keep my bluffing face on, and chances are, most people will agree with me. This is very UNSATISFYING information to me….and if I ever run a project or a field school, such things will never be uttered.
Oh well. I do get to spend every day at a place most people never even get to see. I think one of the things that is really just offsetting to me is the underlying anxiety that when I leave here, on paper it should appear as though I have all of the excavation experience in the world given the reputation of the project and the reputation of the excavators on board, but if things continue the way they have been, and I still walk away feeling this aimless, I fear I will wind up on a project with high expectations but really having no idea what I’m dong or what I’m talking about. Fortunately enough, each project kind of does things their own way so any fumble I make, to an extent, could probably just be chalked up to that kind of difference…but hopefully my fears are unfounded and I will leave here a pro…and hopefully a happy one….who doesn’t write in run on sentences. In shala (if god wills it). But I suppose the earliest archaeologists didn't have any direction either and they just relied on a common sense, and accute detail....so yes, here's to common sense and anal retentiveness.
Ah I was able to upload some photos:
Here is a shot I took after climbing some huge formation. Obviously the more well known pyramids can be seen, but Khentkawes (not neraly as well preserved, nor massive) is in there too, on the left.
Here's a close up:
And here are pictures of the workers unbackfilling.
Thats probably the extent of what I can post from the site without getting into trouble.
Like I said, hopefully once we are more organized, I will be able to enjoy and appreciate everything that I do a bit more. As it stands, I’m given very little instruction and then left alone on the site…when I do finish whatever it was that I was told to do, I usually return to sketching until someone shows back up to tell me something else to do. The problem with this project is that it has gotten so big that the administrators, who are supposed to be working in the field, are constantly doing other operations…whether it be accomodating the chaotic schedules of everyone here, setting up the house, taking potential donors on tours, working out any type of legal issue, and I’m sure I’m only scratching the surface here. But like I said…a lot of time, especially because I’m alone, I have no idea what I am supposed to do next. Usually I just reread the London Manual of Archaeology or some of the previous reqports on excavations at Khentkawes.
If I continue to feel this uninspired about this kind of work, at least excavations only last until mid april and then I can turn to writing, something I actually enjoy doing….and if finish up writing earlier enough, I supposed I can either come home earlier, work in the lab, or just travel briefly…something who knows. I will still want to see what its like to work on another project before making other decisions about the direction I’m going with my career…though really, I think the discipline needs more people to shack up in labs and actually analyze more material as opposed to more people digging around…so much stuff has been dug up that has never been looked at.
I think uninspired was the word I used earlier…it pretty much sums me up right now. I’m tired, I’m frustrated…I’m someone passionate about information, knowledge, facts, data….but a majority of what I seem to be picking up is “fake it ‘til you make it.” I was told that I’m being thrown into this head first to see if I will sink or swim….seeing as though I am demanding more responsibilities (hence why I now work on the database in addition to survey, mapping and excavation), and the fact that I’m organizing the smaller tasks and being asked questions by students who already completed the field school when I’ve never been to a field school ever, and that I’m the first to voice exactly what I think is and is not time efficient, I would probably say that I am swimming just fine….one thing I was asked to do today though was to create labels and log any new features I saw on site…a new feature is just basically anything that changes or is different within a certain context…if it sounds kind of vague or abstract, that’s how I feel about it too. I was told to do this, and per usual all individuals in charge disappear. So I’m staring at squares, which already have some features labeled from previous seasons….and I have no idea what is and isn’t a distinguishable feature…for example if you are looking at a wall, and this is the with a few centimeters of sand removed from the surface, we aren’t talking deep levels here…how am I supposed to know whether or not a mudbrick wall, as I am seeing it, is one continuous feature, or if it is broken up by different rooms and buttressed by different installations? Are there ways to determine this? You betcha! Have I been taught…no…Is it obvious…in some areas yes, in some areas its really ambiguous…I’m a conservative archaeologist…I do things with certainty…when I explained that I don’t know, but that I want to know and I want to know how, I was told that archaeology is like poker…true analogy…that if I say it’s a new feature, keep my bluffing face on, and chances are, most people will agree with me. This is very UNSATISFYING information to me….and if I ever run a project or a field school, such things will never be uttered.
Oh well. I do get to spend every day at a place most people never even get to see. I think one of the things that is really just offsetting to me is the underlying anxiety that when I leave here, on paper it should appear as though I have all of the excavation experience in the world given the reputation of the project and the reputation of the excavators on board, but if things continue the way they have been, and I still walk away feeling this aimless, I fear I will wind up on a project with high expectations but really having no idea what I’m dong or what I’m talking about. Fortunately enough, each project kind of does things their own way so any fumble I make, to an extent, could probably just be chalked up to that kind of difference…but hopefully my fears are unfounded and I will leave here a pro…and hopefully a happy one….who doesn’t write in run on sentences. In shala (if god wills it). But I suppose the earliest archaeologists didn't have any direction either and they just relied on a common sense, and accute detail....so yes, here's to common sense and anal retentiveness.
Ah I was able to upload some photos:
Here is a shot I took after climbing some huge formation. Obviously the more well known pyramids can be seen, but Khentkawes (not neraly as well preserved, nor massive) is in there too, on the left.
Here's a close up:
And here are pictures of the workers unbackfilling.
Thats probably the extent of what I can post from the site without getting into trouble.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Monday 3/3/08
Until I get internet in the apartments, I probably will not post every day. It's just really inconvenient.
In happy happy news, I'm finally back to my babysleepingschedule. Went to bed at 9:20 pm last night, and slept straight until 5:00 this morning.
I'm quickly catching on to things and even started taking over some of the minute work that needs to be done before we can really make other progress...things like labeling all of the grid pegs on site. This morning when I woke up I had no idea how one went out mapping and establishing coordinates for a site, especially one like the Giza plateau where there are various settlements and areas that both have and have not yet been surveyed. By the end of the day, I had mapped out where all of the pegs were, beginning at the Khentkawes Pyramid, and moving east, I made all of the labels with coordinate numbers and the North and East measurements.
I don't feel like writing anymore. I'm pretty bored at work with this kind of stuff. Hopefully it gets better.
Also, I'm not sure where the misconception came from that food is scarce out here...There is Breakfast at 6:00: eggs, yogurt, beans, bread etc , Second breakfast at 10:00, bean or falafel sandwhiches , Lunch at 1:30, and dinner at 7:00. Coffee and Tea in between and plenty of other biscotti-ish like foods available.
In happy happy news, I'm finally back to my babysleepingschedule. Went to bed at 9:20 pm last night, and slept straight until 5:00 this morning.
I'm quickly catching on to things and even started taking over some of the minute work that needs to be done before we can really make other progress...things like labeling all of the grid pegs on site. This morning when I woke up I had no idea how one went out mapping and establishing coordinates for a site, especially one like the Giza plateau where there are various settlements and areas that both have and have not yet been surveyed. By the end of the day, I had mapped out where all of the pegs were, beginning at the Khentkawes Pyramid, and moving east, I made all of the labels with coordinate numbers and the North and East measurements.
I don't feel like writing anymore. I'm pretty bored at work with this kind of stuff. Hopefully it gets better.
Also, I'm not sure where the misconception came from that food is scarce out here...There is Breakfast at 6:00: eggs, yogurt, beans, bread etc , Second breakfast at 10:00, bean or falafel sandwhiches , Lunch at 1:30, and dinner at 7:00. Coffee and Tea in between and plenty of other biscotti-ish like foods available.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Sunday March 2nd 2008
Where do I start? Ugh.
So if you had not deduced already, knowing me to be the avid blogger that I am, I have been without access to the internet the past few days (amongst other doses of chaos- where’s a Pharaoh when you need one?)
My last two days in Luxor weren’t anything too amazing. Thursday I never even left my hotel, though I did do a lot of research on graduate programs and other things I should probably know more about. I worked on posting pictures, which still proved to be a pain in my ass. I suppose it is better to pace myself on posting pictures anyways since I probably wont be doing too much more site seeing, which means less pictures overall. Perhaps it will work out better if I can divide up the areas I went to and devote a detailed blog entry to each and post that about once a week….I’ll think of something. Either way, I’ve taken over 400 pictures, so fret not, this trip is documented.
In general, the last you heard from me, you read of my very public love affair with Luxor. Well let me assure you, the honeymoon is over. Friday, my last day in Luxor, began great and slowly deteriorated. In the morning I ate breakfast with Mohson, and later met with Richard to head back to Luxor Temple. Even though I had already been to Luxor, I knew Richard would point out things that had not originally caught my attention, and that he would know information that wasn’t presented in my guide book. Sure enough the day was completely different than the time I had spent there Tiuesday. We actually, privy to our specialization, went through the relief scenes and focused on the animals portrayed. Anthropological Archaeologists who study in Egypt are different from Egyptologists and one of the ways in which they are different is that Anthro Archarologists are not as focused on the texts. To be an Egyptologist you are required to know Egyptian texts, to be able to decipher hieroglyphs and various other aspects of Egyptian wrtiting systems and language throughout Egyptian history. Even though anthropological archaeologists don’t approach research questions with that avenue of knowledge, we still look at the texts nonetheless. For example, one way we can double check some of the taxa present in our samples would be by seeing if they appear in the text reliefs. Its just an additional piece of evidence to provide a context to evaluate some of our results. We can double check certain species of fish, like the catfish, because we see catfish depicted in Egyptian carvings…in other words we have collaborative evidence to suggest that they consumed fish in some sort of context whether dietary, or ritual etc. Additionally we can see how animals were used, how they were prepared, what ways they were butchered etc.
That’s all a little bit tangent, remember the point was, Friday started off good. Well 5:00 p.m. rolled around and I was getting ready to leave for the airport when Richard met me to tell me some news about my living arrangements. Originally, before I left I was under the impression that I would be staying in the Villa again, which although a little run down, I was happy about since it’s the main hub for everyone and its where the meals are, and where our transportation to the site leaves. At some point while I was in Luxor, I was told I would be staying in the large apartments, which is where I stayed last year for the final 2 weeks. If you read my blog last year, you know that I enjoyed the apartments very much since it was air conditioned, but also, those last two weeks, no one else was around. Since it was just Richard and I, we went out to eat every night, and the transportation still picked us up there. In other words, all the reasons why I prefer the Villa, applied to the large apartments as well. Regardless, I was not displeased with having to stay in the large apartments. I was told I would have two sweedish roommates (any guys out there reading this can keep their sick little fantasies to themselves!). I was pretty content with all of this, especially after I heard about all this drama going on with the living arrangements and everyone else having problems. One problem is that, a crew member this year is bringing her new born baby, and no one wants to be shacked up in an apartment living with her and her baby. The problem eventually seemed taken care of because they were going to put the woman and her baby in the small apartment complex, by themselves, and everyone else would be in the Villa, the large apartments, or in a hotel. Well before I go to leave Richard says he has some news for me. First he tells me that I am going to be here before any one else and so I will be all by myself my first night in the apartment. This isn’t that big of a deal to me either. I’m not going to get in until late, I have Saturday off to sleep in and Richard comes in early in the morning on Saturday and we were planing to go into town to pick up some stuff at the market…I was looking forward to it all. The next thing Richard tells me is this, “Also there’s been another change…you are no longer staying in the large apartments. You will be in the small apartments, and beginning April 1st..dum dum dum (he actually said dum dum dum)…you will have to be with Ferra and the baby.” I could feel my blood rise to my cheeks and heat my face with my lividness. I did not know what to say….this was not something I signed on for…Earlier in the week though, Richard said that if I really wanted, I could use his tent after he leaves Giza (he’s leaving the 14th of March). Richard stays in his own tent in the yard of the villa. It has an air mattress and electricity. Initially when he offered, I considered it for a second, thinking it would just be neat to say that I stayed in a tent, but then said I didn’t want to be antisocial and opted for the apartment and the swedes.
Recalling this I say….”Okay, well then I am going to have to take you up on your offer to stay in your tent….remember how Jessica was complaining about originally having to live with the baby, and her feelings on it were that she likes babies some of the time, she just doesn’t want to live with them…..well, that is not me…I don’t like babies ANY time.”
Richard said that it was not a problem and that I could move into his tent as soon as he left…and you bet your ass that is where I will spend the next two months…yes I would rather live in a tent, outside, in Egypt, instead of in the same apartment as a baby.…I don’t say aww when I see a baby…I don’t want to hold it, I don’t want to touch its “itty bitty hands” or its “itty bitty feet”….I don’t want to make faces at it, and most importantly, I don’t want to hear it crying in the middle of the night when I have to get up at 5:00 am.
Oh well though…I’ll live in the tent, be closer to the villa, and everything will be fine. I am calmed back down and I get on my flight for Giza. Again, after calming myself down, I realize I have it great, I am excited about my job, I’m excited to spend the day in town and to just relax before I begin work and learning on Sunday.
I get into Cairo airport at about 8:00 pm. For whatever reason I don’t get my lugguage until almost 9:00 and I don’t make it back to my apartment until almost 11:00. At this point, I’m pretty exhausted to say the least. I’m given a key to my apartment and a note which reads:
“Kelly, we are actually opening the site tomorrow. Morning meeting is at 6:45. See you soon.”
Really?
Wait….
REALLY?
This was the EARLIEST I could be informed that we were working…not to mention this didn’t even make sense….I was the first person here, who else was going to be working?! The whole point of me being here was that I was paired with someone to teach me everything…I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.
At this point I’m too tired to care….I just wanted to walk into the apartment, make some hot tea and get into bed…I walk into the apartment, and it is absolutely barren. I mean empty. Last year it had furniture, the kitchen was stocked, the internet was on…it wasn’t the most lavishly decorated place, but it felt liveable. This was just big empty open space. The stove didn’t work so I couldn’t heat water for tea…I was such a sadface Kelly…haha I literally felt like it was similar to being sentenced to a night in Jail. It was freezing and the blankets here smell like gasoline (which I guess is what mothballs smell like to me?) the only good thing was that I ransacked the apartment and stole the most comfortable pillows.
The only good thing I could say about it all, was that I was exhausted and I fell asleep pretty quickly.
Then I woke up and went to the meeting…my premonitions were correct, I was the only person going to work at the site, anyone else that was here was working at the lab (which is actually really far away from the site, so it means that I will not be in the vincinity of any one I know). At 7:00 I went down to the site with Ana. She is an excavator who holds some other important position for the project because she is constantly on her cell phone and seems to be who a lot of people answer to or go to when things go awry. She shows me the site and then a team of Egyptians, entirely non english speaking Egyptians, start removing the backfill on the site (at the end of a season, a site is covered up with sand to protect everything = backfill). Ana tells me to go grab a brush, and join the men in removing backfill….which seems like an easy enough thing to do right? Well, it’s a fucking desert…that’s a shitton of sand…and if I wasn’t doing something right, or I wasn’t removing enough, I couldn’t be spoken too, I was just tugged on and yapped at in arabic…always they tried to tell me things in arabic…apparently my looks of utter confusion and bewilderment were of no indication that I had absolutely no idea whats going on…mind you at this point, Ana has left me there. So there I am, with a brush, removing sand from some mudbrick structures amidst a group of 40 or so arabic strangers. I didn’t know where the bathroom was, I didn’t know where water was, I didn’t know anything and I didn’t know any one.
When Ana returned after a few hours she gave me a notebook and pencil and told me to start sketching the layout of the site…didn’t give me any sort of standard or convention on how to do it, and I certainly don’t know what they are, so again, I’m left alone teaching myself archaeology apparently. But I wasn’t complaining at that point…I would draw for the rest of the day if it meant not returning to the stupid brushing.
Finally Ana comes back to the site with Richard and another student, whose English is also not good. Ana brings the site plans and goes over a lot of information for the site and what the general plan and goals are for the project this season. Finally. Information. She gives me and the other student two things of measuring tape and tells us to go map the features to scale 1:100….if you think I knew what that meant when I was told, you’re wrong…I had no idea. The student and I tried to work together on it, since she had actually done it before, but not being able to communicate really prolonged my ability to grasp what was going on, but I think I got it eventually.
We ended at 1:30, which made me happy. We had lunch and Richard and I went to town as planned. This was especially a relief since there was no food or anything in the apartment. So we picked up some things after a long long taxi drive there. The ride there was long and pretty standard chaotic Egyptian driving…but the ride back…I really thought I was going to die this time. It took me a few times before I was adjusted to the recklessness of Egyptian driving last year…I thought this time I wouldn’t even be phased….but that was until I got into the car to return home from town. This guy was terrible...I felt like I should have been praying in the backseat. I seriously questioned whether or not I was going to survive that ride home, and sure enough….we got hit by a bus….A BUS! A bus. Side swiped by a bus, along my door no less.
It wasn’t really that bad, because luckily, traffic is so bad in Cairo you’re never really going that fast.
That brings us up to today. Finally internet! Today was a basic repeat of yesterday...again I'm pretty much on my own a lot at site and try to figure things out. I've done a lot of background reading on Khentkawes so that I can approach the archaeological material with as much knowledge as possible.
Well there are a lot of things that are wrong with the apartment I'm living in (no internet, only 2 minutes of hot water, no shower head, toilet doesn't flush etc) and we are going to go attempt to take care of said issues now.
Sorry for the delay in postings, I am safe and making it through, and per usual working on the picture posting situation.
So if you had not deduced already, knowing me to be the avid blogger that I am, I have been without access to the internet the past few days (amongst other doses of chaos- where’s a Pharaoh when you need one?)
My last two days in Luxor weren’t anything too amazing. Thursday I never even left my hotel, though I did do a lot of research on graduate programs and other things I should probably know more about. I worked on posting pictures, which still proved to be a pain in my ass. I suppose it is better to pace myself on posting pictures anyways since I probably wont be doing too much more site seeing, which means less pictures overall. Perhaps it will work out better if I can divide up the areas I went to and devote a detailed blog entry to each and post that about once a week….I’ll think of something. Either way, I’ve taken over 400 pictures, so fret not, this trip is documented.
In general, the last you heard from me, you read of my very public love affair with Luxor. Well let me assure you, the honeymoon is over. Friday, my last day in Luxor, began great and slowly deteriorated. In the morning I ate breakfast with Mohson, and later met with Richard to head back to Luxor Temple. Even though I had already been to Luxor, I knew Richard would point out things that had not originally caught my attention, and that he would know information that wasn’t presented in my guide book. Sure enough the day was completely different than the time I had spent there Tiuesday. We actually, privy to our specialization, went through the relief scenes and focused on the animals portrayed. Anthropological Archaeologists who study in Egypt are different from Egyptologists and one of the ways in which they are different is that Anthro Archarologists are not as focused on the texts. To be an Egyptologist you are required to know Egyptian texts, to be able to decipher hieroglyphs and various other aspects of Egyptian wrtiting systems and language throughout Egyptian history. Even though anthropological archaeologists don’t approach research questions with that avenue of knowledge, we still look at the texts nonetheless. For example, one way we can double check some of the taxa present in our samples would be by seeing if they appear in the text reliefs. Its just an additional piece of evidence to provide a context to evaluate some of our results. We can double check certain species of fish, like the catfish, because we see catfish depicted in Egyptian carvings…in other words we have collaborative evidence to suggest that they consumed fish in some sort of context whether dietary, or ritual etc. Additionally we can see how animals were used, how they were prepared, what ways they were butchered etc.
That’s all a little bit tangent, remember the point was, Friday started off good. Well 5:00 p.m. rolled around and I was getting ready to leave for the airport when Richard met me to tell me some news about my living arrangements. Originally, before I left I was under the impression that I would be staying in the Villa again, which although a little run down, I was happy about since it’s the main hub for everyone and its where the meals are, and where our transportation to the site leaves. At some point while I was in Luxor, I was told I would be staying in the large apartments, which is where I stayed last year for the final 2 weeks. If you read my blog last year, you know that I enjoyed the apartments very much since it was air conditioned, but also, those last two weeks, no one else was around. Since it was just Richard and I, we went out to eat every night, and the transportation still picked us up there. In other words, all the reasons why I prefer the Villa, applied to the large apartments as well. Regardless, I was not displeased with having to stay in the large apartments. I was told I would have two sweedish roommates (any guys out there reading this can keep their sick little fantasies to themselves!). I was pretty content with all of this, especially after I heard about all this drama going on with the living arrangements and everyone else having problems. One problem is that, a crew member this year is bringing her new born baby, and no one wants to be shacked up in an apartment living with her and her baby. The problem eventually seemed taken care of because they were going to put the woman and her baby in the small apartment complex, by themselves, and everyone else would be in the Villa, the large apartments, or in a hotel. Well before I go to leave Richard says he has some news for me. First he tells me that I am going to be here before any one else and so I will be all by myself my first night in the apartment. This isn’t that big of a deal to me either. I’m not going to get in until late, I have Saturday off to sleep in and Richard comes in early in the morning on Saturday and we were planing to go into town to pick up some stuff at the market…I was looking forward to it all. The next thing Richard tells me is this, “Also there’s been another change…you are no longer staying in the large apartments. You will be in the small apartments, and beginning April 1st..dum dum dum (he actually said dum dum dum)…you will have to be with Ferra and the baby.” I could feel my blood rise to my cheeks and heat my face with my lividness. I did not know what to say….this was not something I signed on for…Earlier in the week though, Richard said that if I really wanted, I could use his tent after he leaves Giza (he’s leaving the 14th of March). Richard stays in his own tent in the yard of the villa. It has an air mattress and electricity. Initially when he offered, I considered it for a second, thinking it would just be neat to say that I stayed in a tent, but then said I didn’t want to be antisocial and opted for the apartment and the swedes.
Recalling this I say….”Okay, well then I am going to have to take you up on your offer to stay in your tent….remember how Jessica was complaining about originally having to live with the baby, and her feelings on it were that she likes babies some of the time, she just doesn’t want to live with them…..well, that is not me…I don’t like babies ANY time.”
Richard said that it was not a problem and that I could move into his tent as soon as he left…and you bet your ass that is where I will spend the next two months…yes I would rather live in a tent, outside, in Egypt, instead of in the same apartment as a baby.…I don’t say aww when I see a baby…I don’t want to hold it, I don’t want to touch its “itty bitty hands” or its “itty bitty feet”….I don’t want to make faces at it, and most importantly, I don’t want to hear it crying in the middle of the night when I have to get up at 5:00 am.
Oh well though…I’ll live in the tent, be closer to the villa, and everything will be fine. I am calmed back down and I get on my flight for Giza. Again, after calming myself down, I realize I have it great, I am excited about my job, I’m excited to spend the day in town and to just relax before I begin work and learning on Sunday.
I get into Cairo airport at about 8:00 pm. For whatever reason I don’t get my lugguage until almost 9:00 and I don’t make it back to my apartment until almost 11:00. At this point, I’m pretty exhausted to say the least. I’m given a key to my apartment and a note which reads:
“Kelly, we are actually opening the site tomorrow. Morning meeting is at 6:45. See you soon.”
Really?
Wait….
REALLY?
This was the EARLIEST I could be informed that we were working…not to mention this didn’t even make sense….I was the first person here, who else was going to be working?! The whole point of me being here was that I was paired with someone to teach me everything…I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.
At this point I’m too tired to care….I just wanted to walk into the apartment, make some hot tea and get into bed…I walk into the apartment, and it is absolutely barren. I mean empty. Last year it had furniture, the kitchen was stocked, the internet was on…it wasn’t the most lavishly decorated place, but it felt liveable. This was just big empty open space. The stove didn’t work so I couldn’t heat water for tea…I was such a sadface Kelly…haha I literally felt like it was similar to being sentenced to a night in Jail. It was freezing and the blankets here smell like gasoline (which I guess is what mothballs smell like to me?) the only good thing was that I ransacked the apartment and stole the most comfortable pillows.
The only good thing I could say about it all, was that I was exhausted and I fell asleep pretty quickly.
Then I woke up and went to the meeting…my premonitions were correct, I was the only person going to work at the site, anyone else that was here was working at the lab (which is actually really far away from the site, so it means that I will not be in the vincinity of any one I know). At 7:00 I went down to the site with Ana. She is an excavator who holds some other important position for the project because she is constantly on her cell phone and seems to be who a lot of people answer to or go to when things go awry. She shows me the site and then a team of Egyptians, entirely non english speaking Egyptians, start removing the backfill on the site (at the end of a season, a site is covered up with sand to protect everything = backfill). Ana tells me to go grab a brush, and join the men in removing backfill….which seems like an easy enough thing to do right? Well, it’s a fucking desert…that’s a shitton of sand…and if I wasn’t doing something right, or I wasn’t removing enough, I couldn’t be spoken too, I was just tugged on and yapped at in arabic…always they tried to tell me things in arabic…apparently my looks of utter confusion and bewilderment were of no indication that I had absolutely no idea whats going on…mind you at this point, Ana has left me there. So there I am, with a brush, removing sand from some mudbrick structures amidst a group of 40 or so arabic strangers. I didn’t know where the bathroom was, I didn’t know where water was, I didn’t know anything and I didn’t know any one.
When Ana returned after a few hours she gave me a notebook and pencil and told me to start sketching the layout of the site…didn’t give me any sort of standard or convention on how to do it, and I certainly don’t know what they are, so again, I’m left alone teaching myself archaeology apparently. But I wasn’t complaining at that point…I would draw for the rest of the day if it meant not returning to the stupid brushing.
Finally Ana comes back to the site with Richard and another student, whose English is also not good. Ana brings the site plans and goes over a lot of information for the site and what the general plan and goals are for the project this season. Finally. Information. She gives me and the other student two things of measuring tape and tells us to go map the features to scale 1:100….if you think I knew what that meant when I was told, you’re wrong…I had no idea. The student and I tried to work together on it, since she had actually done it before, but not being able to communicate really prolonged my ability to grasp what was going on, but I think I got it eventually.
We ended at 1:30, which made me happy. We had lunch and Richard and I went to town as planned. This was especially a relief since there was no food or anything in the apartment. So we picked up some things after a long long taxi drive there. The ride there was long and pretty standard chaotic Egyptian driving…but the ride back…I really thought I was going to die this time. It took me a few times before I was adjusted to the recklessness of Egyptian driving last year…I thought this time I wouldn’t even be phased….but that was until I got into the car to return home from town. This guy was terrible...I felt like I should have been praying in the backseat. I seriously questioned whether or not I was going to survive that ride home, and sure enough….we got hit by a bus….A BUS! A bus. Side swiped by a bus, along my door no less.
It wasn’t really that bad, because luckily, traffic is so bad in Cairo you’re never really going that fast.
That brings us up to today. Finally internet! Today was a basic repeat of yesterday...again I'm pretty much on my own a lot at site and try to figure things out. I've done a lot of background reading on Khentkawes so that I can approach the archaeological material with as much knowledge as possible.
Well there are a lot of things that are wrong with the apartment I'm living in (no internet, only 2 minutes of hot water, no shower head, toilet doesn't flush etc) and we are going to go attempt to take care of said issues now.
Sorry for the delay in postings, I am safe and making it through, and per usual working on the picture posting situation.
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