I work in Iowa, and my job is to survey areas that the Iowa Department of Transportation wishes to buy for a new highway or bridge or some such. I'll tell you a little secret--the best time to find surface and near-surface archaeological sites, in the American Midwest anyway, is right after the farmers have cultivated and the first soaking rain has washed the fields down. In such fields, the artifacts (stone flakes, potsherds, and historic artifacts, mostly) fairly dance out and bite you on the ankle. Perfect conditions: late March to the first week in May. Might be a few nippy mornings or two, but, mostly, ideal.
The DOT Don't Work Ideal
Sadly, "the DOT don't work ideal." Sometimes we won’t get plans until the summer and the work needs to be completed before snowfall. Nothing can be helped--ya gotta do the survey in July and August.
Now, in theory at least, you can still find surface sites in corn fields even at their highest. The corn plants shoot way up, 6, 7, 8 feet tall sometimes, but the ground around their roots is perfectly clean and visible. Corn in the Midwest is planted about 30 inches apart, leaving just adequate room to walk between the rows. The problem is, the space between corn rows is not the most hospitable place to be in the heat of an Iowa summer.
The Joys of Contour Plowing
At 9:35 am that morning it was already 85 degrees F. We are walking in corn, tall corn, 7 foot tall corn, sharp-edged, mean green 7 foot tall corn. The leaves are covered with little pearls of water and the air is rank with yellow pollen. Because of federal environmental regulations, farmers in the Midwest contour plow, meaning that cultivated rows follow the curve of the hill, and the farmer leaves some chaff in his field at the end of each year. Ironically, this makes survey in July difficult and unpleasant. I have often cursed the "good" farmer, when rows veer off in different directions, taking part of my crew with it, to be lost in the eccentric labyrinth. In July I long for straight north/south rows and clean fields. To heck with conservation tillage.
The knife-edged corn leaves extend into the spaces between the rows at knee to eye level and they leave little paper cuts on any exposed skin. Appropriate garb for this situation includes long khaki pants, wool/acrylic socks pulled up over the cuffs, walking boots, t-shirt, long-sleeved overshirt, bandanna wrapped around ears and lower face, and baseball cap tilted down to rest on the top of sun or regular glasses. Walking corn in July is one of the many reasons I gave up contact lenses; lose a contact in a corn field and it is gone forever.
Where's Margaret Dumont When You Need Her?
So, anyway, there I am, hands clasped behind my back, eyes firmly on the ground before my feet, hunched over like Groucho Marx chasing Margaret Dumont, my brain racked with worry. I'm torturing my crew of two "young subalterns" (as Mortimer Wheeler put it), one "old China hand," and one retired postal worker who wants to learn about archaeology in his golden years.
The OCH and I have been out in the field together for years; he can take anything, and I'm not worried about him. The YS's are whining about the heat and blisters and poison ivy and wild parsnip and low wages and poor living conditions; but I'm not worried about them&--they're young and tough. The RPW is 63, fit as only RPWs can be and, since he made it through 40 years of the U.S. Post Office without resorting to an Uzi, he doesn't worry me either.
