Hello Dear Readers,
Today is one of those "ending" days. Valerie and the girls left for Connecticut this afternoon. It was much harder than I thought to say goodbye. I have grown so close to these girls, and it's terribly sad to realize I won't be working with them again. Endings are a reminder of how memorable people/places/experiences can be, and how surprisingly deep they can affect you.
I've met and been lucky enough to work with some absolutely fabulous people. I can definitely say I've been blessed with the "luck'o'the Irish." haha. How else can I explain the amazing experiences I've had and people I've met? I definitely feel changed, but how those changes will manifest, you, Dear Readers, will have to assess yourselves; i can't pinpoint them myself.
In summation, a few reflections:
Archaeology:
You know, I'm not really sure what I expected for the field school. I had no idea that Sacsaywaman was a massive Archaeological Park, or that it was a park at all. I thought we'd be excavating at the base of the fortress itself. The fortress was my laptop background for a few months. Haha! I also thought the trowels would be larger, not sure why. I mean, you'd think I'd have googled an archaeological trowel before I left, but no, I didn't; and was surprise at how tiny they are.
Excavation was definitely more tedious than I expected, and I had anticipated tedium. it was definitely dirtier than I expected. It's much easier to dig as a kid, when you have no purpose but the digging itself. We you're actually digging with the secret hopes of uncovering something hugely exciting, it really dampens the excitement. I mean, I loved digging in the dirt as a kid. Now? It's definitely lost all child-like glamour, if dirt can have glamour, that is.
We rean into a big problem with our original site as well. Basically, the ISIC wouldn't give us the appropriate permits we needed to break ground at the site we're were supposed to excavate, El Balon de Diablo (the Devil's balcony). I guess that's politics for ya. Talk about a bummer. I walked to the site one weekend, and it was absolutely beautiful. So, we were working on a friend of Alexei's site, at Qochapata, which is still in The Sacsaywaman park. It was an Inca ceremonial site. several structures had already been uncovered which was cool because one of the reasons I chose this projet was because I thougth I'd be working near some still-standing architecture. I thought it'd feel like I was really there, not excavating in some empty field.
I also definitely came to this field school with the Indiana Jones ideology.I expected to find something on the Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-scale. In actuality, it was the exact opposite. I did one week of digging in a trench & the last 2 weeks excavating an Inca burial. I got set up with the burial because I had a background in human osteology, and as I want to pursue a career in Forensic Anthropology, this was a great opportunity to gain some experience with bones in the field. There was a team of three of us: Me, Christina, & Jose. I'd say it was even more tedious than working in the trench for obvious reasons. We had to go very slowly to avoid damaging the human remains, and to avoid moving anything out of it's original context (we already knew that this had been a severely disturbed burial, totally out of it's primary context, but there are protocols to follow.) Unfortunately, it was a 2ndary burial and the bones were in despicable condition. there were no articulated bones.
In my own personal ruminations about Archaeology, I've decided it's about digging for the truth in the dirt, - oh yea, i know that sounds cliche - digging up the truth about past civilizations and answering questions and maybe finding that those people weren't as different from us as our preconceived notions might have led us to believe. Or, conversely, that they were radically different. I can to Peru with the intention to find "stuff." It sorta blew my idea of what archaeology was when on the first day at the dig site Tom, the T.A., said that Archaeology is about gathering information, not about finding "stuff." Stuff isn't necessarily going to give us the information we want, or need.
Archaeology is also about patience. If you don't have patience, I don't see how it's possible to be an Archaeologist. I also believe that Archaeology is about making connections with the past, and finding "lost" information. To quote Lara Croft, "Everything lost is meant to be found." ( I'm a total Tomb Raider geek.)
over & out.
meg...
