I should add, I have been on a dig in all this time! haha... oh the irony. For only a few days! I dug 70cm deep in total, 10cm spits at a time. It was situated in an outside suburb in the greater Melbourne area, the soil was sandy and easier to dig than most, and I found a few flakes! which was rather cool. It reminded me of that Simpson's episode where the whole town conducts an archaeological dig and after hours of no yield someone finds a bottle cap and Principal Skinner remarks on how his heart rate just doubled for an instant. I found it hilarious as after awhile of digging dirt and finding the smallest little thing can excite a person to such a great extent that to a passerby they must look completely bonkers. There was a high yield of artifacts all round during this dig—thank god :p It was my first go at a trowel but not much I'm afraid as we were on a tight deadline and I had to abandon the trowel for a heavy pick axe and shovel. There was an Australian Aboriginal representative watching over the dig as it is part of the legislation here and I struck up a good chat with him and found out about how these digs supply quite a good amount of income for the indigenous community.
Speaking of flakes and stone tools, I recall one test I had to take last year. I walked into the lab and there were 30 rocks laying on some canvas on the lab bench. I was the only student in there and had to take the test after all the other students because of a shift I was called to do. In any case the nice admin lady winked at me and said she'd give me a few more extra minutes and collect me when the time was up. I was instantly grateful as the stones before me, besides the obvious flakes and cores, were rather bewildering. I think I'll remember that kindness forever.
I had to name types of fabric (that is, what the rock is made out of), the number of platforms it has, the name of each of the platforms, what kind of tool it was and other such questions. It was one of the hardest tests in one of the hardest subjects offered in the entire program.
We were even allowed to take in our text books, but I found later it didn't do anyone any real good. The professor allowed us a pass if we could gain at least 33% of the mark.
Final Project from Hell
The final project was rather difficult also, a design project and report, the way professionals were trained to do. We were divided into groups of three, and tediously examined and analysed a set of stone tools found at a cave site in outback Australia. Each little stone tool had to be recorded, its marks, its platforms, its size and every little thing you can imagine to record off a man-made stone tool, ranging from the size of your hand to the size of a pebble. We had to put all this data into a spread sheet and analyse it and figure out just what we thought occurred at that site so many thousands of years ago.
All in all there were 700-1000 stone tools we had to go through and meticulously record. I remember sitting in the lab with the other students looking at the tools after a few hours of recording and we simultaneously started laughing out of sheer exhaustion and boredom. We then sobered up and decided these stone tools belonged to an ancient tribe of mini-Pleistocene pygmies who were obviously well advanced beyond the Aurignacion. I did make a few good friends from that saga so it all turned out good.
The Cold Hard Reality of Raw Scientific Data
Jokes aside though for the first time most of the students in the course realised what archaeology was really about and deep hidden fancies of Incan ruins, lost treasure and Middle Eastern wonders washed out of our minds and in place was the cold hard reality of raw scientific data, its tedious collection, analysis and regurgitation into a report that had to show that you knew what you were talking about and that your understanding and hypothesis at least made a semblance of sense... Suffice to say I annoyed my lecturer and asked her a rather abrupt question... 'We already know what they do with these stone tools, why must we count exactly how many flakes are struck off it? Does it really add to anything? Does it really matter? Are we not getting stuck into too much detail and losing the bigger picture? Mainly what is the point of this study? What new information is it giving us about subsistence patterns in which we already know from other near by sites?'
