Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Day 62--Just Another Day in Paradise
Variable weather!!
July 22--cold, windy with a few snow showers--no big deal--
July 25--wind so strong it picks up the gravel like shotgun pellets
July 27--Beautiful sunny day, temps in the 50's, basking in the sun like lizards--
July 28--Regular day at the point, cold, windy but do-able
July 29--the first "Snow Day" of the season, Wind at 30 MPH, temp at 34--looking out my window the snow is horizontal and the wind is picking up--snow and wind predicted for the rest of the week--We were in lab today, and for the first time, ran out of stuff to do and sent the kids home aqt 12:30. Ws are completely caught up with the backlog of artifacts from 2006, 2007, thoudands of pounds of peat and we were processing artifacts today we removed on Monday. There are whitecaps on our little lagoon. I'm anxious to see how much damage the driftwood feature has suffered. When we left on friday, there was a small 3' high beach ridge of sand and gravel between us and the surf line. and the beach line was 12-15 feet from the rear edge of the pit. On Monday the beach ridge was gone and the surf line was 4-5' from the back edge of the pit with some of the larger waves lapping at the edge right below us--the more startling thing was to see the permafrost jutting out from the bluff about 2' below us and the waves undercutting it by a good 3-5'. that section of bluff will just collapse and disappear. We had located and flagged the peat location with tundra and peat earlier in the season, it was startling to see a piece of the tundra come floating by with a pin flag stuck in it. I'm going to try to find a picture of the site earlier when we first opened it up and contast that with one taken Monday.
July 22--cold, windy with a few snow showers--no big deal--
July 25--wind so strong it picks up the gravel like shotgun pellets
July 27--Beautiful sunny day, temps in the 50's, basking in the sun like lizards--
July 28--Regular day at the point, cold, windy but do-able
July 29--the first "Snow Day" of the season, Wind at 30 MPH, temp at 34--looking out my window the snow is horizontal and the wind is picking up--snow and wind predicted for the rest of the week--We were in lab today, and for the first time, ran out of stuff to do and sent the kids home aqt 12:30. Ws are completely caught up with the backlog of artifacts from 2006, 2007, thoudands of pounds of peat and we were processing artifacts today we removed on Monday. There are whitecaps on our little lagoon. I'm anxious to see how much damage the driftwood feature has suffered. When we left on friday, there was a small 3' high beach ridge of sand and gravel between us and the surf line. and the beach line was 12-15 feet from the rear edge of the pit. On Monday the beach ridge was gone and the surf line was 4-5' from the back edge of the pit with some of the larger waves lapping at the edge right below us--the more startling thing was to see the permafrost jutting out from the bluff about 2' below us and the waves undercutting it by a good 3-5'. that section of bluff will just collapse and disappear. We had located and flagged the peat location with tundra and peat earlier in the season, it was startling to see a piece of the tundra come floating by with a pin flag stuck in it. I'm going to try to find a picture of the site earlier when we first opened it up and contast that with one taken Monday.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Day 60--The Mother of All Test Pits
We've spent most of the week digging the mother of all test pits, see the picture or pictures I've posted. this one is 15 meteres X 4 meteres X 1 1/2 meteres, even accounting for the slumps on the sides which are inevitable, we still figure we excavated 60 cubic meteres of gravel. This is no small feat. The idea was to see how far the driftwood feature extended back from the bluff, we dug it about 10 meters from the back edge of the driftwood feature, so there is a 6-7 meter berm between the two, which also may have to go or we can expand it to the sides going east and west--we'll see.
Mostly the weather has been, as they say, variable. For all the days except Wed, it was cold, cloudy or foggy, and windy. Wednesday was beautiful, 40-45 sunny, little or no wind, got a good shot of Adam napping on his Honda. We've been using the Honda's as loading platforms, to haul away buckets of gravel, 3 on the back, 3 on the front and one in each foot well, each bucket weights about 50+ pounds, maybe even 60-70 depending on how full they are so the Honda's are hauling 400+ pounds on each load.
Thursday was spent mostly excavating 2 faux burials, vegatative mounds, that usually indicate burials but in this case weren't--Friday, I spent in the lab with two folks from the dental clinic who brought over their portable X-Ray machine and we tried to take x-rays of the available excavated burials with dentition. Out of the potential 26 burials, we got 4 done, the learning curve got pretty steep for awhile, and we'll see if any useful information actually gets produced. Problems were, bringing the pediatric film instead of the adult film, having only one box of film, 75, which we used up on the four burials, aiming the x-ray gun at the mandible with the full box of x-ray film right behind it, possibly exposing the unexposed film, setting the angle of the gun so Vera was sitting in the direct line of fire, etc. The conditions at the point were(I was told) very cold, and they two PI's in charge were guageing the wind strength with a portable anamometer at 22MPH and decided if it picked up to 35 MPH, it was quitting time, as at 35 the gravel gets picked up by the wind and acts like shotgun pellets whipping across the landscape. Got a decent picture of Angelique who is one of the elders in residence here who makes masks out of caribou skin, wolf fur, seal fur etc, marvelous pieces of native art.
Mostly the weather has been, as they say, variable. For all the days except Wed, it was cold, cloudy or foggy, and windy. Wednesday was beautiful, 40-45 sunny, little or no wind, got a good shot of Adam napping on his Honda. We've been using the Honda's as loading platforms, to haul away buckets of gravel, 3 on the back, 3 on the front and one in each foot well, each bucket weights about 50+ pounds, maybe even 60-70 depending on how full they are so the Honda's are hauling 400+ pounds on each load.
Thursday was spent mostly excavating 2 faux burials, vegatative mounds, that usually indicate burials but in this case weren't--Friday, I spent in the lab with two folks from the dental clinic who brought over their portable X-Ray machine and we tried to take x-rays of the available excavated burials with dentition. Out of the potential 26 burials, we got 4 done, the learning curve got pretty steep for awhile, and we'll see if any useful information actually gets produced. Problems were, bringing the pediatric film instead of the adult film, having only one box of film, 75, which we used up on the four burials, aiming the x-ray gun at the mandible with the full box of x-ray film right behind it, possibly exposing the unexposed film, setting the angle of the gun so Vera was sitting in the direct line of fire, etc. The conditions at the point were(I was told) very cold, and they two PI's in charge were guageing the wind strength with a portable anamometer at 22MPH and decided if it picked up to 35 MPH, it was quitting time, as at 35 the gravel gets picked up by the wind and acts like shotgun pellets whipping across the landscape. Got a decent picture of Angelique who is one of the elders in residence here who makes masks out of caribou skin, wolf fur, seal fur etc, marvelous pieces of native art.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Day 53--3 days at the point
We spent the last three days at the point doing the usual archaeological stuff. I've been working in the area we have labled the fox den since that is what once lived there. the area is 7 metres X 6 meters and were working an alternate checkerboard pattern with the intent of removing it all eventually. the top 3-6" is covered with thick turf that is a mother to cut through. The trowels up here are honed to a razors edge, so that helps and then we cut through the last 1 or 2 inches with a shovel. If you are careful you can peel back the turf, saving it to replace later and most of the artifacts, faunal bones, bone chips and whalebone + human bones are either on the surface or imbredded in the last inch or so of roots. Thrus at lunch we were sitting on the leeward side of the tent to get out of the wind when the kids strolled around the side and plunked down a 60 pound seal that had gotten caught in a fishing net and drowned. Protocal says it has to be offered to the owner of the net and he decides disposition.
Friday was different story altogether. We left for the point at 9AM on friday and got back at 2:40 AM on saturday, your basic 17 hour workday. There was a significant non-burial find made at 3PM which dictated that we stay until it was removed.Due to its composition and fragility it simply could not remain exposed to weather and potential destruction over the weekend. We've all been sworn to secrecy so I can't say more than that until later.
Saturday we were all pretty useless due to the previous workday(s)and today, sunday , not a lot better but better than saturday. Tomorrow we are back out at the point for the week, weather for those who follow that stuff, is 35-40 degrees, with a 15-20MPH wind and rain/snow predicted for the entire week. snow is not a problem, rain is.
Pictures this time are me and Denver banding snowy owl chicks (eat your heart out Sarah!) the seal mentioned above, Kyle with the seal strapped to the honda and someones idea of a joke, a fox trap baited with a peppermint, HA!! it would take at least a bottle of beer to be effective!
Friday was different story altogether. We left for the point at 9AM on friday and got back at 2:40 AM on saturday, your basic 17 hour workday. There was a significant non-burial find made at 3PM which dictated that we stay until it was removed.Due to its composition and fragility it simply could not remain exposed to weather and potential destruction over the weekend. We've all been sworn to secrecy so I can't say more than that until later.
Saturday we were all pretty useless due to the previous workday(s)and today, sunday , not a lot better but better than saturday. Tomorrow we are back out at the point for the week, weather for those who follow that stuff, is 35-40 degrees, with a 15-20MPH wind and rain/snow predicted for the entire week. snow is not a problem, rain is.
Pictures this time are me and Denver banding snowy owl chicks (eat your heart out Sarah!) the seal mentioned above, Kyle with the seal strapped to the honda and someones idea of a joke, a fox trap baited with a peppermint, HA!! it would take at least a bottle of beer to be effective!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Day 49 Snowy Owls & Skinning a Caribou with a Spam Lid
Today was Snowy Owl day, Frank and I finally hooked up with Denver to go out and monitor and band some snowy owl chicks. He had mercy on me/us and took us out to two nests that are "close" in--He covers 100 square miles of territory with 30 nests, mostly on foot, some of which is accessable by 4 wheeler, but mostly on foot. These nests are a long ways apart, at least 1 mile usually 2-3 miles to give the pair a decent hunting territory. they feed on lemmings, and they kill the lemmings and leave them whole for the chicks, which either eat them whole or if they are little, the parents, will tear them apart so the chicks can swallow the parts whole and then regurigate the bones and fur as a pellet. They are suprising passive as they are approached, the parents are also very tolerant, the female usually sits about 40 yards off and watches, the males tend to do flyovers and dive bombing runs, sometimes actually clobbering the researchers from behind. If anyone thinks these guys are small;, take a look at the picture of Lauren with a female snowy that is earth bound because she molted too many feathers. We checked two nests and banded 4 out of 6 chicks in one nest and 4 out of 5 in the other. It was something we both wanted to do and I'm glad we did.
Lewis Brower was in the lab today talking about his fater who is 86 and out fishing --getting about 40 whitefish a day, and expecting to get about 150 a day in august. The stuff you learn by keeping your ears open and just listening to the kids talk amoung themselves is wonderful--Every alaskan citizen can kill 5 caribou a day, A DAY!! Kyle was telling David about him and a couple of friends, killing a caribou and then discovering that no one had a knife to gut and skin it--they sat there debating what to do until they got hungry and opened a can of spam for lunch and Shazam!! figured they could gut and skin it with the Spam lid, which they did --You can't make this stuff up even if you tried. Krista was asking Kyle if he had any polar bear claws he was willing to sell and for how much, while bebating the price, he let ship it was a bear he had killed when he was 13--
There are 7 divers and 2 bear guards going down to expore the Point Franklin site where 31 whalers were trapped in the ice, crushed and sank in about 1875--they are being helicoptered in and Anne gave the task of coming up with the shopping list to David and Kyle, Camp food for 7 people for 14 days, ended up being about 300 pounds of food, with debates amoung the kids and adults as to what would work and what wouldn't refigeration is no problem, simply dig a hole and put it in--it'll keep just fine.
We'll be in the field tomorrow, working on Clare's driftwood feature, hopefully it won't rain--we've been in the lab for the last couple of days, so it'll be nice to get back out--check the pictures--
Lewis Brower was in the lab today talking about his fater who is 86 and out fishing --getting about 40 whitefish a day, and expecting to get about 150 a day in august. The stuff you learn by keeping your ears open and just listening to the kids talk amoung themselves is wonderful--Every alaskan citizen can kill 5 caribou a day, A DAY!! Kyle was telling David about him and a couple of friends, killing a caribou and then discovering that no one had a knife to gut and skin it--they sat there debating what to do until they got hungry and opened a can of spam for lunch and Shazam!! figured they could gut and skin it with the Spam lid, which they did --You can't make this stuff up even if you tried. Krista was asking Kyle if he had any polar bear claws he was willing to sell and for how much, while bebating the price, he let ship it was a bear he had killed when he was 13--
There are 7 divers and 2 bear guards going down to expore the Point Franklin site where 31 whalers were trapped in the ice, crushed and sank in about 1875--they are being helicoptered in and Anne gave the task of coming up with the shopping list to David and Kyle, Camp food for 7 people for 14 days, ended up being about 300 pounds of food, with debates amoung the kids and adults as to what would work and what wouldn't refigeration is no problem, simply dig a hole and put it in--it'll keep just fine.
We'll be in the field tomorrow, working on Clare's driftwood feature, hopefully it won't rain--we've been in the lab for the last couple of days, so it'll be nice to get back out--check the pictures--
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Day 46-I'm Back in Barrow Again--
I was trying to come up with a clever title and the one above is the only one that occured to me from that great Gene Autry classic, "I'm back in the saddle again, back where a friend is a friend" For those of you who don't know who Gene Autry is,don't be concerned--you aren't missing much--
After the 90+ degree heat of California--the brisk 40 degrees of Barrow is comfortable--refreshing really--The ice has moved offshore, we've got open water for small boats to go out hunting and fishing, not much sometimes only 50 -100 yards, but the boats are out there, the caribou are starting to move north and one of the bear guards said that either he or his brother(i forget which) had shot 5 the previous day. they are out on the BEO (Barrow Environmental Observatory) where a lot of the plant and bird people do their research. The caribou move north to escape the flies and mosquitos. I was talking to Lauren and she had pictures of the offal that the hunters had left from the caribou, and mentioned that they were trying to use some of it to feed Snowy Owl hatchlings that they are banding and monitoring.
I met up with Frank Kelley when I got off the plane on Wednesday, he is the Polar Trec teacher from Vermont who will be with us until the end of the field season, he is posting a journal at www.polartrec.com under Nuvuk Archaeology, the previous teacher, Elizabeth Eubaks was here for the previous month and her journal is interesting also--she has really nice pictures of birds if that is your thing(Sarah and Doug) Her journal is listed under Tundra Dynamics. Her last day was yesterday so about 20 of us went to Pepe's for dinner.
The night before the whole 10 of us went to dinner at Osaka's and on the way in this older Native Alaskan, pulled up next to us in a pickup truck, rolled down the window and asked "you guys wanta buy some baleen?" Most baleen is pure black with grainy lines in it, it is basically keratin(sp) like hair or fingernails, so after establishing the price, I bought one of the 2 pieces he had. 5' long and about 6" wide at the base, AND it is black with a pearlized whitish layer on top. The deal is that it has to be signed by an alaskan native to be legal, and this guy did not have a scribe with him and neither did we, but ANY alaskan native can sign it and that makes it legal for export, I'll have one of the bear guards or one of the kids sign it--
Spring/Summer is here in Barrow with plants desperately tryng to flower and reproduce before they get frozen again. Denver, the Snowy Owl guy, has been trapping lemmings and dissecting them to get an idea of the lemming reproduction rate, as it relates to how well the owl chicks will do--more on that later, Frank and I may go out with him next weekend to help--
pictures this time are not that dramatic, one small ice bit that is clinging to the shore at the point and some of the flowers that have been poking up--
Bye for now--
After the 90+ degree heat of California--the brisk 40 degrees of Barrow is comfortable--refreshing really--The ice has moved offshore, we've got open water for small boats to go out hunting and fishing, not much sometimes only 50 -100 yards, but the boats are out there, the caribou are starting to move north and one of the bear guards said that either he or his brother(i forget which) had shot 5 the previous day. they are out on the BEO (Barrow Environmental Observatory) where a lot of the plant and bird people do their research. The caribou move north to escape the flies and mosquitos. I was talking to Lauren and she had pictures of the offal that the hunters had left from the caribou, and mentioned that they were trying to use some of it to feed Snowy Owl hatchlings that they are banding and monitoring.
I met up with Frank Kelley when I got off the plane on Wednesday, he is the Polar Trec teacher from Vermont who will be with us until the end of the field season, he is posting a journal at www.polartrec.com under Nuvuk Archaeology, the previous teacher, Elizabeth Eubaks was here for the previous month and her journal is interesting also--she has really nice pictures of birds if that is your thing(Sarah and Doug) Her journal is listed under Tundra Dynamics. Her last day was yesterday so about 20 of us went to Pepe's for dinner.
The night before the whole 10 of us went to dinner at Osaka's and on the way in this older Native Alaskan, pulled up next to us in a pickup truck, rolled down the window and asked "you guys wanta buy some baleen?" Most baleen is pure black with grainy lines in it, it is basically keratin(sp) like hair or fingernails, so after establishing the price, I bought one of the 2 pieces he had. 5' long and about 6" wide at the base, AND it is black with a pearlized whitish layer on top. The deal is that it has to be signed by an alaskan native to be legal, and this guy did not have a scribe with him and neither did we, but ANY alaskan native can sign it and that makes it legal for export, I'll have one of the bear guards or one of the kids sign it--
Spring/Summer is here in Barrow with plants desperately tryng to flower and reproduce before they get frozen again. Denver, the Snowy Owl guy, has been trapping lemmings and dissecting them to get an idea of the lemming reproduction rate, as it relates to how well the owl chicks will do--more on that later, Frank and I may go out with him next weekend to help--
pictures this time are not that dramatic, one small ice bit that is clinging to the shore at the point and some of the flowers that have been poking up--
Bye for now--
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