It's hot!

On our single precious day off last week we went to Sugar Loaf, an artist's colony in the little town of Sugar Loaf, NY.

Artsy! But in a commercial sort of a way!

Tucked into the green hills, the main street is lined with little shops selling anything from watercolors to candles to little sculptures of skeleton pirates. We spent a few hours wandering from store to store, happily content in the cool, moist air under an overcast sky.

Not pictured: my new kitty friend. Don't pet the tummy! It's a trap!

We stopped at the Barnsider Tavern for a beer, then went on to the nearby French cafe La Petite Cuisine for lunch.

Mmmmm. Nice to be back in civilization. Every morning I see on the weather channel that it's raining in Bismarck, ND, and I laugh a little bit.

It has been ferociously hot and humid this week. In fact, I believe that today we broke the all time record high - shattered it, in fact, by 4 degrees. When it's already 85 at 9:00am, you should just give up and go spend the day in a dark, air conditioned room. The weather channel recommended that us here in the 94-degree high, 90% humidity Northeast should stay inside and limit exercise.

So we went out to dig holes in the sun.

It actually wasn't so bad. I mean, it was bad, but it wasn't soooo bad. It could have been worse - we could have spent the day without any shade, like some people on the crew. Our unit was strategically placed to get shade by 3:00. Ha!

Leland found another way to keep cool during the lunch break...

Worth the wet boxer shorts?

The water was cold and wonderful (even though I only went in up to my knees).

We also had some wildlife companions to get us through the day.


Yesterday night we had a wonderful surprise when Leland's parents came to visit! They had just been in North Carolina... and they found a gorgeous house down there for us to rent!! More on that later...

How much to show?

Such a pretty part of the country:

Stream leading to the WallKill River

We're very near to the Black Dirt Region, which has unbelievably dark, rich soil that apparently can grow anything. It's the remnants of an ancient lake and was swampland before farmers drained it in the mid-1800s. Essentially peat, in fact. I'll try to get some pictures of it but I'm not sure my little digital can really do it justice. It looks like ground up oreos.

Our day today was very hot (high of 90, humid) and Leland and I dug a nasty unit. Full of rocks, clay bottom. Hard to dig, hard to screen.

Our gorgeous backdirt

See? Big!

Now, you may have noticed me being a little vague about exactly where we are and what we're doing. That's for a good reason. Of course, I want to be vague about company information, and so I won't reveal the company we're working for or post anyone's real names.

But besides that, archaeological sites can attract the wrong type of attention from people who don't understand the difference between archaeology and looting. We are careful about the way we dig - proceeding in levels, screening dirt, collecting all artifacts, mapping significant aspects of the site and each unit, lots of paperwork.

We're scientists, and each part of that work that we do in the field is a piece of the puzzle. When correctly assembled, we can figure out what happened at the site. Where we find things - horizontally and vertically - is just as important as what we find. In fact, it's more important. If we don't know where an artifact comes from within the site, it's useless to us. It's lost context, and therefore we don't know where in the puzzle to place it.

A lot of people have picked up arrowheads before, and many enjoy fieldwalking where they collect artifacts on the surface of a plowed field. I'm not crazy about this practice, but any artifact on the surface has been disturbed, meaning that it has been moved from the location where it was dropped hundreds or thousands of years ago. Usually in a plowed field this has happened because of the plow itself.

Some people take this habit a step farther and actually dig for artifacts. This is called looting. It destroys the context of the artifact and the site and takes away part of the puzzle from us, making it that much harder to figure out what happened. Instead of scientific information, the artifact becomes only a pretty curio. People who do this often don't realize that they're doing anything wrong, because they don't understand the other aspects of being an archaeologist - they think we just find stuff.

The worst offenders then sell the artifacts they find. Some rare artifacts (like certain projectile points / arrowheads or ceramic pots) can be worth a lot of money. This is part of the black market antiquities trade and it makes me furious. And don't get Leland started on people diving for underwater "treasures". Just like on land, underwater sites like shipwrecks lose most of their scientific value if they're ripped apart by looters.

So you'll understand that I don't want to identify specific sites or locations. The areas I have identified contained sites that are pretty well known.

10 Things

Mondays, man...

There is always a certain amount of standing around in archaeology, but this company has the worst case of standing around that I have ever seen. Especially at the very end of the day, when we get back to the hotel. I am no longer getting paid for this - why are we just loitering in the parking lot?

I treasure my few personal hours every day. Get up at 6, work 7-5, and then I have five precious hours before sleep. That may sound like a lot, but I have a lot of lying around to do to make up for all of the effort expended during the day. Leland is off on a bike ride right now, and that makes no sense to me. I just spent 10 hours digging holes. More physical exertion is at the bottom of the priority list.

I generally enjoy my job, but motivation is hard to come by in the mornings, especially Monday mornings.

10 Things I Tell Myself To Get Through Monday Mornings:

1) Just six days until my next day off.

2) Just ten hours until I'm back in the air conditioning watching T.V.

3) Just five hours until lunch!

4) At least it's not raining today. (Or, if it is: at least it's not supposed to rain tomorrow. Or, if it is: we might get a rain day tomorrow!)

5) Think of all the overtime!

6) At least I'm not working retail and therefore don't have to kiss anyone's butt today.

7) I still have a 40 minute car ride before any real work begins.

8) I get to live in a hotel, which, let's face it, every kid fantasizes about at some point.

9) I might find something really cool today.

10) I get paid to be an archaeologist! There are only about 3000 professional archaeologists at any one time in the United States, so I'm in a relatively select club.

We had a pretty good day today, actually. We were doing phase 1 shovel testing, which is very boring. 50cm round holes, 15 meters apart, for about 3 miles. But we're done and now we get to do a phase 2, which is much more like an actual excavation and is at a site that's already been found (phase 1 is how we find sites, phase 2 explores them further).

We saw the cutest little orange salamander today, and a spotted one yesterday, but my camera has run out of batteries.

More pictures soon, I promise.

Day off

For those of you who were having trouble posting comments, I think I fixed it. You should be able to post comments now without creating a username for Blogger. Post away!

The flower in the last post is apparently a wild geranium. Thank Lisa for her horticultural knowledge.

Today is our day off. This is a bit exciting because we work 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, and have only Sundays off. CRM schedules are often bizarre - I've worked regular 5-day 40-hour weeks with weekends off, but also have worked "8 days on, 6 days off" - i.e., 8 ten hour days in a row and then 6 days break. No overtime in that scenario because you do two weeks work in the 8 days. I've heard also of "9 days on, 5 days off" and "4 days on, 3 days off".

Overtime isn't really common for the same reason it isn't common in other hourly-wage fields (no one wants to pay time and a half), but it is more common in CRM than in other areas except, perhaps, construction. There are two reasons for this:

1) Projects are usually rushed ("this pipe needs to be in the ground by June! You have three weeks to finish before the bulldozers arrive!")

2) Companies will make tons of money once the pipeline/well/whatever goes in, so they don't mind paying overtime up front.

As a result, we get 20 hours of overtime a week. Which is sweet. However, that means we work 60 hour weeks. Which is no joke when you dig holes all day long.

The long days make more sense when you think about the amount of time it can take to get to a project. We drive 45 minutes one way to get to the site - that's an hour and a half out of the day before any work has even occurred. One project I worked on had a two hour one way commute, leaving only 4 hours of actual work time each day.

Anyway, that means we have only one day off every week, and I intend to lay around and do nothing.

Well, not do nothing, because I have to devote a certain amount of time to scratching my bug bites. The area we're in is heavily wooded and we have a constant swarm of black flies and mosquitoes around our heads as we work. I had a very impressive itchy lump that pretty much took over my forearm, but it seems to be receding now. Not so much my ear, which I guess has a bite on it somewhere because the entire thing has been really swollen, red, and itchy for two days.

Most impressively, I got my first ever deer tick bite! I've lived and worked outside in several tick-infested areas and never even seen a deer tick (they're about the size of a poppy seed), but one showed up sticking into my hip two days ago. Deer ticks are the species that carries Lyme Disease. On the lookout for the characteristic bullseye rash, which should show up within a week or so if I have the disease.

Only about 1% of people bitten by deer ticks get Lyme Disease, and the percentage is down to basically 0 if the tick is removed within 36 hours (which mine was), so I'm not concerned - just alert.

Now, that's safety!

We are now in Goshen, NY, working for a pipeline project. The pipeline is being added to and so we are making sure that they don't destroy anything important as they do the construction. The past two days we worked in a state forest, and soon we'll be moving to a national park!

The scenery is gorgeous, both the nature and the little towns in this area. Lots of trees, cute old East coast houses, and culture. Possibly the biggest difference between NY and ND. For example, yesterday for lunch we went to a little deli right near the project and it was delicious. There probably isn't a restaurant that tasty in the entirety of North Dakota.

Last night we attended SAFETY TRAINING! And now we are SAFE! We know not to carry firearms with us or detonate explosives in our cars, and that we can't drink at work. Naturally, we were doing all of those things before so this information came as a huge surprise, I can tell you!

All of the contractors working for this pipeline have to attend the same training, and so the required safety video is 99% related to construction work and 1% related to anything we might be doing. Nonetheless, we shall not stand in the way of pointless bureaucratic rules! For our trouble, we got stickers for our hardhats showing that we passed.

Yes, we have to wear hardhats. Also, reflective vests and steel-toed boots. As our trainer reminded us, it is hunting season and we are in the woods, and so I am totally down with the reflective vests. But the hardhat and the boots? Are the hunters aiming for my feet? Am I in danger from falling airplane parts?

Leland demonstrates proper safety gear.

It's really not so bad, just a little silly.

The forests here are so lush, it's possible to completely forget that we're in modern New York, just an hour from the City.

North Dakota, this ain't.

We're also in a historically old part of the country. Out West, all the old homesteads and other historic features are already known (for the most part), and landowners certainly know what's on their property. Here, only foundations remain and no one living remembers who lived here.

Historic building foundations

See the rock wall?

Horticultural Quiz!

What plant am I?

Any guesses will be believed entirely, as I have no clue what the answer is.

Wildlife Report

Had to post this picture of a ground squirrel I took in North Dakota...

Closeup!

There are bears in our project area here... and apparently two new babies just out of the den. Wonder if I can take their picture without getting mama angry?

The Saga Continues...

Sorry about the lack of posts, but we've had a crazy few days.

Last Monday evening we were in Medora, South Dakota, on top of a gorgeous butte. Tuesday we got back out to the site (forecast iffy, but only 30% chance of precipitation). It was cold and windy, but we began work.

Then the clouds began to roll in. We had miles of visibility across the badlands from our perch, but one by one the hills were swallowed up by the white band of advancing nothingness.

Where did everything go?

We were screwed.

Not rain, not even sleet, but actual fluffy flakes. In May. At first it wasn't so bad - even though we were basically in the cloudbank, the temperature wasn't too bad and a few flakes were nothing to worry about. Better snow than rain, actually - you get less wet.

Making the best of things

When Leland's mom saw this picture, she thought it was him. It's me. I'm a supermodel in the field.

These pictures, of course, don't really do this justice. It was so windy that the screens were difficult to hold up, and snow was building up on my back and legs. The dirt was muddy and very difficult to push through the screen. Finally our boss threw in the towel, and decided that we would pack everything up, go back to Bismarck, and return in a few days when the weather was supposed to get better.

To say that I was displeased by this would be putting things mildly. Of course, it was ludicrous to continue to excavate. It was too cold and sloppy to do anything carefully, and our paperwork was quickly wet and encrusted with mud. And the decision to drive the two hours back to Bismarck was an easy one - why pay for hotel rooms for people to just sit around when you don't have to?

But I was dreaming about the hot tub and sleeping in a bed after excavating in the snow and wind all morning. Returning to the KOA - because we had no place to stay in Bismarck - was not what I wanted to do.

Then we had a change of plans.

We had only been planning to remain in North Dakota for a few weeks, because we didn't want to be local techs. Local techs are responsible for their own housing and do not receive per diem for expenses. Non-local techs get a paid hotel and per diem. After accounting for rent and not receiving PD, that would really cut into the total amount we could make this summer. And we're trying to pay for Leland's tuition next year without taking out loans.

We were very upfront with the company in Bismarck about our intentions to look for other hotel-and-PD work, but it was still bad timing when we received a phone call on the way home from Medora to Bismarck. Long project on the New York/PA border. Starting in 8 days. Lots of overtime. Were we available?

We decided to leave Bismarck for the new project, and we had to leave that evening. It was a little shitty to leave the Bismarck company in that manner (in the middle of the stalled excavation), but the benefits to us in leaving were too great to give up the opportunity. People in the Bismarck company weren't pleased that we were leaving, but we could tell that they would do no differently, given similar circumstances. "You have to do what you have to do." We heard that a lot.

That evening, after 8 hours of driving, we were back in St Paul. The next day we packed up all our stuff, rented a U-Haul, and took off for Pennsylvania. We had a weekend in PA, and then drove the final leg up to Goshen, NY, where we are now.

We had a half day today in the field and the location is gorgeous - in a state park and completely wooded.

A few of the crew members complained about the weather today, but Leland and I weren't phased. Sure, it was about 55 degrees and drizzling, but there were trees! And no wind! And NO SNOW!