What, I Thought this Blog was About Archaeology?

It has occurred to me recently that I have not written about archaeology in a long time. People might visit to this blog and say to themselves, "she says she is an archaeologist, but she offers little evidence to support this claim. Mostly she seems to eat and spout nonsensical philosophy."

That is, if anyone actually visits this blog.

I was just a baby archaeologist in this picture (taken 6 years ago) not much has changed since then. I even still wear that vest. Maybe I am smarter?

I have actually been doing a lot of archaeology lately, one might say I spend roughly 40 hours a week "doing" archaeology in some fashion. Actually, it is probably more than that 'cause I often read about archaeology in my spare time. I went to Charleston and looked for people in a cemetery using GPR (see this post for an explanation of that GPR stuff). I have been writing a bunch of reports and making some pretty maps. I am good at making maps, it is kind of one of my things.

The problem with an archaeology blog is that we archaeologists are kind of a secretive bunch. We are also not that trusting. I do not trust the people of the great internet world to not use my work for evil.

What is evil you ask? I will make a list:

1.) Looting. Looting is very evil and a huge problem. Not just a huge problem for people in far away places and at famous sites. It is a huge problem in places like central Tennessee. Back in the day (I mean about 1,000 year ago), people were often buried with prestige items such as jewelry and ceramics. These are apparently valuable for resale. Just look on ebay, it is sickening. Bearing in mind, that many of those things for sale on ebay involved the destruction of a grave, that was somebody's great, great, great, great, great-grandparent. Looting is happening in your backyard. Looters are organized, they are contributing to an unethical global trade in antiquities, and they use legitimate archaeological work to help them achieve their ends. My secrecy is in part to avoid inadvertently helping looters.

That pile of rocks in the foreground is a huge site in southeastern Utah.

2.) Client confidentiality. The people who hire us are often private corporations. Sometimes they are planning projects that are not public knowledge. We are often one of the first consultants on the site. I would not want to distribute knowledge about a project before it is made public by the people who pay the people who pay my bills. Insider trading is bad, just ask Martha Stewart.

3.) Intellectual property. Often I am doing work for someone else's research. They pay me. They get first dibs on publication. End of story.

Secretive bunch, like spies, only without guns or spying.

Just doing my part to fit in with the locals (note the 10 gallon hat).

Technically, some information about archaeological sites are excluded from freedom of information act requests because they are sensitive. Looting is bad.

We also cook a bunch and I like to write about that, because food is..... well, delicious. I also have no ethical qualms talking about making BLTs.

On Traveling

I have just arrived home from a very intense, multi-faceted set of projects. I have only been gone for 8 days but it seems like longer. I have been temporarally residing in Florida, New Mexico, and Arizona. I have stayed in hotel rooms, couches, and futons. The trip has involved three airplane rides and two rental cars.

Canyon de Chelly, AZ

I do not mean to complain. My job is aweome, I get to travel to lots of places and meet wonderful people. It is just tiring, both emotionally and physically.

Fieldwork can be stressful. This has been no vacation. Nights have been late and days have been long. I have blisters on my feet, sunburns, bug bites, and chapped lips.

I can't really talk about the work (big suprise, client confidentiality and all), but I will say I was in Palm Beach County, Florida and in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. Both huge vacation destinations where I was working terribly hard (not joking here). I did spend some time on the beach and touring the canyon rim.

Now, what I really want to talk about here is traveling alone. Because geophysical archaeology is really a one or two person task I usually travel alone, sometimes we meet an assistant at the job site. This means lots of alone time, alone on the road, alone in a hotel room, alone at restaurants, alone on the beach, etc.

Deerfield Beach, Florida

I am not the type of person that spends a lot of time in isolated contemplation. Not that there is anthing wrong with that, it is just not me. I was never the kid who did things alone. I mean, I could entertain myself, but I had friends to hang with and that was much more fun. I had never been to a restaurant by myself until after graduate school (take-out does not count). If you told teenage Sarah that she would someday have a job that would require her to travel across country by herself, spend long evenings in a hotel by herself, and (gasp) tour around by herself, she would have had an anxiety attack and started worrying about it for the next 5 to 10 years (I was a very anxious child, I would lose sleep over elementery school tests). Now I am mostly ambivalent about my solo work, sometimes I even like it.

In Albuquerque

Five Awesome things about traveling alone:

1.) You can eat whatever you want, whenever you want. You feel like greasy burger, it is yours. You want dessert and an appetizer, go for it!

2.) Reading books at dinner. Sometimes talking is lame and you really want to know what happens in your book. Sometimes you do not have anything to talk about with a coworker.

3.) Listening to my dorky podcasts. Most people are cooler than me and are not interested in the last episode of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me or the even nerdier NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour.

4.) No one will judge you for eating a whole bag of crunchy cheetos and washing it down with a fountain coke.

5.) You can stop at roadside attractions most people would consider lame.

The Kind of Crappy Things About Traveling Alone:

1.) Silence at Dinner. Occasionally, you do want to talk and you have lots to say.

2.) Drinking Alone. I have to say cold beer is essential after a long day in the sun. While I am not above going to a bar by myself and drinking a couple glasses, it is better with someone else.

3.) Laughing. There is nothing lamer than having something funny happen and having no one to share it with. Same applies for something cool... It is nice to share these experiences with another.

4.) Bad stuff happens and you have to deal. Alone. Nothing is less fun than dealing with a screw up by yourself.

5.) People look at you funny. Then they ask you, "is that just one." If I were a dude people might assume I was a business traveler. As a young women, they never think that.

Friend I visited in Canyon de Chelly, rocking the gray and green.

Where the Pavement Ends in "Real" America

There is an episode of 30 Rock where Alec Baldwin's character wants to hire a new actor for TGS. The catch is that he wants to hire someone from "real" America. Liz Lemon (Tina Fey's character) point out that there is no part of America that is more American than any other. Any person who lives in America is American.

I travel a great deal for work. In the course of these travels, I often go to places that are not normal tourist attractions. This has given me a unique view of how people are living around the country.

I was driving across South Carolina yesterday and thinking about how lucky I am to get to see lots of different facets of America.

Savannah, GA

I saw a sign reading "Joe the Plumber lives here" and I realized that it is a pretty common misconception to think that where we live and who we are is "real". Who really sees themselves as an elitist?

Hovenweep National Monument

Maybe if everyone could see that across the country we are all basically the same, life would be a little less contentious?

Sort of near Truth or Consequences, NM

We are all Homo sapiens, after all. There is no such thing as biological race, right?

Chaco Canyon, NM

Well, everywhere I have gone people are basically the same.

Sorry for the rambling. I had a long drive and bike ride this morning, so I lots of quiet time to think. This is what you get...

Where in the Southeast is Sarah?

Okay, sorry for the blog silence. I was sent to South Carolina for work on really short notice. In fact, I am still in SC during the week and will be there for awhile now. I am about to start my third week in the middle of nowhere. Have you ever heard of Camden, SC? Lake Wateree?

I really can't talk about the project I am working on. It is not really top secret, just proprietary information. Plus, it is fun to say I can't talk about my work. It makes me feel important.

I do want to talk about South Carolina. We are living in rented vacation homes on Lake Wateree, which is a dammed river (hehe "damn" river). The closest town is about 30 minutes away and the closest bar is about 10 minutes away. This basically means we spend a lot of time entertaining ourselves at home.

For archaeologists this means lots of beer.

Every young professional (or graduate student) I know says their profession/field of study is full of intense drinkers. Perhaps there are lots of people out there that regularly drink more than archaeologists, in fact, I am sure there are. But, the people I work with drink a lot of beer.

It makes sense, we are away from our homes and families. We are usually in towns that have small populations and limited evening activities. So what is there to do?

Lake Wateree is beautiful though. While we drink this beer we watch herons perched on the dock, ospreys fish in the lake, and even bald eagles soaring above.

We can also see the stars and bars (Confederate Flag) flying proudly from a sailboat docked nearby.

Begin rant:

That particular flag epitomizes the inherent contridiction that is the state of South Carolina. Beautiful state, some really nice individuals, but some real jerks too. This just might be my crazy "northerner" background talking and I might open a can of worms by saying this, but the Confederate flag is a symbol of modern racism. I know people talk about it being a heritage symbol. If you consider defending the oppression of a group of humans based on their skin color, "heritage" maybe you are right. If was truly a "heritage" symbol it would not just be white southerners flying it.

End rant.

Well, at least we can drink beer and watch the birds. Sorry for the long disorganized post...

Newberry, South Carolina

Last week I went to Newberry, South Carolina. I had never heard of this town until I got the project information. That is one reason I love my job, I get to go crazy different places. I would never visit Newberry ordinarily.

It really makes me appreciate what I have in Chapel Hill, 19 year-old sorority girls, crazy hippies and all. We have lots of restaurants. Restaurants that are open for lunch. Newberry was a little bit depressing downtown.

It snowed the week before my trip, everyone in South Carolina went crazy. It does not snow often down here.

One of Newberry's many attractions is its Japanese garden. That is right, it has an orange garden. This is rather unexceptional, except there is a sign by the door mentioning that the garden is an example of vernacular landscape (they used the term vernacular, he he). It also had to be closed during WWII due to vandalism. Shame Newberry, shame..

Apparently, the designer of the garden was a wealthy local guy and he modeled the garden after his visit to the San Francisco Japanese gardens. Not after Japan, but San Francisco.

They have bamboo too. Bamboo grows in South Carolina and Japan.

What, you ask, was I doing in Newberry? I was digging holes in people's front yards. This is an extremely awkward task. I feel like the neighbors are all sitting by their windows with guns ready to shoot. I think, in some parts of the country, ruining a lawn is a capital offense.

Typically, when I do excavations I am in an area where new development is planned and, therefore, not in a town. I like working in urban environments (except the gun thing).

Five Reasons it is Awesome to Work in Towns:

• There is always somewhere to pee indoors
• No brambles to scratch hands and legs
• Sidewalks and mowed lawns
• Lunch out at a restaurant (if your town has restaurant open)
• Easy to mark the project area boundaries

Five Reasons it Sort of Sucks to Work in Towns:

• People constantly asking what you are doing
• Buried utilities
• Guns
• Dogs
• Crazy people...

That is what I have been up to lately.

On the Road, Again and "Big" Archaeology

Right now, I am about to embark on a journey down to South Carolina, the much mocked neighbor of my home state. I will write more about what I am doing in South Carolina in a later post (I promise). The short story is that it not very "sexy" archaeology.

An example of not "sexy" archaeology.

In this post, I would like to talk about what I do and common perception (misperceptions?) about archaeology and archaeologists. This talk was inspired by the guy at Enterprise who rented a car to me yesterday morning.

As I was telling him that the car rental was going to be on a corporate account, he asked me what my company (and I) did. Now I will reenact the conversation. Picture me as a slightly rushed person with wet hair (blow drying takes so long....) who is really just trying to get away so she can go grocery shopping with her husband.

Rental Car Guy (RCG): What does your company do?

Me: We are a cultural resource management company.

RCG: Uh... I don't know what that is.

Me: We are a group of archaeologists and historians who do work on historic sites in the southeast. I am an archaeologist.

RCG: Oh, like at national parks?

Me: Yes, only we are contractors. So we work at a variety of places some of which are National Parks.

RCG: What are you doing in South Carolina? He had just asked me where I was going, a standard line for the rental process.
Me: I am doing a highway survey, which is [insert shortest possible explanation for shovel testing here]. Remember, I was in a hurry. RCG was not in a hurry, he had visions of Indiana Jones dancing through his head.
RCG: So, have you ever worked on any big sites?

An excavation outside of Tiwanaku in Bolivia. An example of a "big" site.

This is the point where I could have told him about the two world heritage sites I have worked on or my international archaeology work. But, I personally hate that people do not think about cool cultural heritage that they have in their own backyards when they are thinking about archaeology. So, I gave him some brief descriptions of sites I have worked on in Tennessee and South Carolina, which I thought were really cool.

Historic African American cemetery in Beaufort, South Carolina.

A Mississippian era habitation site in Tennessee.

This brings me to my rant. Please do not misunderstand me, I love that people think my job is cool. I think my job is cool. I love explaining archaeology to people and telling them about history and preservation. I think it is great that I get to introduce people to this career that they did not previously know existed. It just drives me crazy when people think my job is all sexy National Geographic-style excavations in Egypt or, you know, "somewhere else".

Archaeology is everywhere! People have been living in North America for a really long time (from 50,000 to 15,000 years, a very debated timeline). Plus, in the recent past, we have a rich history as a country, territory, colonized entity, etc. Your house and town are just one in a long series of houses and towns in your geographic region.

Pueblo Bonito, in Chaco Canyon, NM. A truly amazing UNESCO world heritage site.

This is a prehistoric pit house archaeological site near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

Think of places like Chaco Canyon and Cahokia. Those places are pretty amazing, rivaling anything Egyptian or European in complexity and political organization. If you think of those "big" sites as cities (not that they actually functioned as cities), imagine the "suburbs" a big site like that would have around. Imagine what way those everyday people lived can tell us about our shared human past. That is the archaeology I do! North American archaeology is important and the everyday, small excavations I do serve a purpose in helping us to understand the prehistory of this continent. I am a very small cog in a large group of archaeologists working on sites across the country and world. Very few of these archaeologists are working on something that could be considered a "big" site.

Now I just wish there were some way I could tell this to people who ask me if I have worked in Egypt or what "big" stuff I have worked on without sounding bitter or jaded. Rental Car Guy, remember archaeology is everywhere.

The Elizabeth Cady Stanton House in Seneca Falls, New York.

Shovel Testing

I am an archaeologist. This is a fact that I have not discussed much recently, which is odd because I spend 40+ hours a week being an archaeologist. I travel as an archaeologist and every dinner party I go to I have to discuss being an archaeologist. Archaeology is actually a pretty diverse field. This is surprising to most people.

Typical conversation -
New acquaintance: "What do you do?"
Me: I am an archaeologist.
New acquaintance [is thinking, but how do you make money?]: "Who do you work for?"
Me: "I work for a cultural resource management (CRM) company."
New acquaintance: "So who pays you?"
Me: "I work for a private company that contracts with a variety of federal, state, local and private agencies."
New acquaintance: "Oh [then they decide to let the subject drop]. What is the coolest thing you have ever found?"

Everyone asks about the coolest I have found. I do not know the answer. Archaeology is about context. If a group did not have many ceramics and you find a sherd, this is cool. Ceramics are not as cool when you find 100+ sherds in every screen full of dirt.

Last week I was in Charleston, SC. We were working on a tract of land that has been a tea farm, rice plantation, and more modern housing. Did you know that tea was briefly subsized by the U.S. government? It was a largely failed enterprise as a whole. There is still one operating tea farm in the United States (see this). There were still wild tea plants growing across the tract.

Shovel Test

In CRM archaeology one common way of exploring an area that has not been previously surveyed is shovel testing. To shovel test an area a grid is established and regular holes are excavated throughout the grid. The distances are measured through pacing and the angles are determined using a compass. The dirt from each shovel test is screened for artifacts.

This is a sort of zen inducing activity. Walk, dig, screen, dig, notes, repeat. This is supposed to locate archaeological sites. Often it even allows sites to be roughly dated. Shovel testing is a necessarily flawed activity. What if a site is less than 30 meters in size and sits between shovel tests? Oh well... let me know if you think of another, better, way to find archaeological sites.

Conference

Last week I went to the Southeastern Archaeological Society (affectionately known as SEAC). Once a year archaeologists who study the southeastern United States meet up at a random hotel to talk about archaeology, drink beer, and generally nerd out. This year it was in Lexington, Kentucky. Home of bourbon, the derby, and, well, not much else.

I presented a paper entitled "Geophysical Prospection as an Archaeological Survey Method: Ground-Penetrating Radar, Magnetometer, and Intra-site Patterning in North-Central Tennessee." No one really wants to hear about my presentation. Actually, there were people at the conference who did care.

The conference was so much fun. Nothing like being surrounded by people who share a common interest. Then you can drink beer and gossip about the same stuff.

In the field! teaser...

This past week and a half I have been at the Women's Rights National Historic Park. I know, this is a pretty cool place. I am a woman. I enjoy voting, owning property, etc. I have these gals to thank for it all.

We have been incredibly busy this trip. I have yet to find time for a real post. But, here I will summarize our field schedule so you can picture me out there slaving away.

7:20 ish - Leave hotel

7:30 - fill our mugs up with real coffee from Zuzu's cafe in Seneca Falls (a very worthwhile visit)

7:45 - arrive at the site, drink coffee, discuss plan

8:00 - begin data collection

12:00ish - lunch, usually cheese and crackers, little soups, apples (it is that time of the year up here in New York)

4:30-5:00 ish - wrap up, finish data collection, roll up tapes

6:00-7:30 ish - Dinner

7:30-10:00 - Data Processing, downloading, and back-up

10:00-11:00 - Quiet time, reading

11:00 - Sleep. Goodnight

News!

Hello blog readers (do I have any blog reader? Mom?)! I have good news! My long period of office time is coming to an end. I am going somewhere. Now I can write about something interesting. Well, cooking is interesting too, but even I get bored of talking about our latest conquests in the kitchen. I want to go somewhere, get dirty, meet new people, try new things, etc.

I am going to.... drum roll please... upstate New York! More to come on this later...

First

It seems like everyone is writing a blog these days, now I am throwing mine into the mix. I guess, I feel like I have something to contribute. At least something my friends and family members will care about.

Okay, first of all, I am an archaeologist. A real, working archaeologist. Most people have no idea what that means. I will start with what that does not mean. I do not own a whip or wear a fedora. I have never touched a dinosaur bone or been to Egypt. I do a lot of assessment, mapping, and, yes, some digging. My specialty is geophysical archaeology, this mostly means I make maps of "stuff" below the ground without digging. In the field of archaeology, we look at how people lived in the past. We work to preserve, protect and study history. It is an amazingly interesting and rewarding job.

To do this amazing job I travel, a lot. When I travel it is not usually to places most people think of as a destination. This means I end up in a lot of interesting places. In these places I have to eat. Did I mention I love food? I am usually not satisfied with simply stopping by national chains. In fact, I will go out of my way to try new and interesting local foods. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. I am planning on using this space to let the world know about my hits and misses.

As perhaps the ultimate act of hubris, here is my blog...