Home Sweet Home

It is good to be home. I miss the mountains of Eastern Tennessee, which reminded me of Pennsylvania where I grew up, and I miss the sounds of trowels in the dirt. I miss the outdoorsy, hard-working feeling of accomplishment and exhaustion after a long and filthy day. I don't miss being away from my daughters and my husband. I am so glad to be home with my family again! I hated being away from my girls for a second summer in a row, and my younger daughter is especially clingy now. Just now, as I asked her to turn off her nightlight in her room, she told me, "Ok, but stand right there where I can see you." I think she's afraid that if she loses sight of me, I might disappear for another five weeks. It is not easy to justify being away for that long to a 9-year-old and 5-year-old, especially because I told them last year that I was doing field school so that I didn't have to do it this summer. Little did I know then that my school would refuse to accept my UVA credits, and that I would be required to complete this field school if I wanted to graduate. Many people have said to me that it's good for my girls to see me following my dream, and I'm sure it's true, but it still broke my heart to be away. I'm hoping that by next summer I can find a job nearby - probably easier said than done!

I can't wait to return to Maryland, where there are quite a few more opportunities in archaeology, historic preservation, and museum work, and where I have some good friends that may be able to help me make connections. Also, I just can't wait to be back on the East Coast - the land of Wegmans; and Rita's; and mountains and oceans and bays; and really, really cool archaeology. There are so many volunteer opportunities in Maryland, where I got my start, and such a great public archaeology outreach. I'm looking forward to going back and being a part of it all. One of my mentors, when I asked how I could ever repay her, said to me "just do the same for someone else someday." I would very much like to do that!

Good to be back home again!

I did not - as previously promised - keep up with the blog as I meant to. Last year's field school blog (bodkinsscuppetsandsilverhalfgroats.blogspot.com) turned into my field journal, which meant I was pretty motivated to keep up with posts. I also didn't anticipate the amount of work I'd be doing at this year's field school. Not only did we have readings for discussion group, we also had to create a posted based on original research to present at Cherokee, NC (location of the Cherokee Reservation) for the local Cherokee community (Eastern Band). On top of all of that, I am also taking an independent study this summer to get in a 400-level course I need for graduation (grrrrr . . . . more on that some other day, maybe). And Dogwood, the party cabin, proved enticing on more than one night. :D

Long story short, I'm a lame-ass, and I didn't post. I don't know how often I will post here - I can only promise that I will try to make any posts interesting to someone. I may post archaeological things, I may post parenty-things, I may post geek-girl things, or I may just post nonsense. I'm not sure yet. I guess -- in lieu of interesting field school posts -- I will at least post some interesting field school pictures to close. Here you go, world. Enjoy:

Steve S. and I on a final trowel-down of the unit. I have to admit, I was pretty chuffed that not only were we the first to find a feature (postmold), we also were the first to hit subsoil and the first to do our trowel-down--and this after losing 2-3 days to the rain. When we came back to the field on Wednesday, June 22nd, our unit had 6 inches of standing water in it. We bailed it, did what we could in the waterscreen with the sloppy muck we were left with that day, and then returned the following day (after lots more rain) to find another pond where our unit should be. (I'd post a picture, but I was so devastated by the mess of it all that I didn't even think to record the lake in our unit for posterity). We lost a LOT of time that week--I was so pleased to be ahead of everyone else by Friday, June 24th, when the above picture was taken!!

This is my unit just before digging features (actually, I think the two sandbags cover postmolds we'd bisected the day before, so perhaps this is just after we started digging features). I would show you the full "after" picture, but we encountered two burials by accident as we excavated what we believed to be middens. We very respectfully replaced all associated bone and feature fill and closed up those particular features immediately. We also contacted the Eastern Band Cherokee archaeologist and representatives, who were well pleased with the steps we had taken (one of them even offered us "medicine" if we wanted - which I totally would have taken him up on if we'd stayed long enough!) But I will respectfully decline from posting any pictures from after.

And this is our intrepid field crew. There are four grad students, my professor (on the far right), and the rest are undergrads or recent grads (I'm talkin' about you, Neil!)