Saturday, June 7, 2008

Day 10--end of the first week

A couple of notes before I forget, the exploratorium people were out with us on Wednesday and spent all day sticking still and video cameras in our faces and there is supposed to be a webcast at 3PM EST on saturday but you can access it by going to www.exploratorium.com hit the polar banner which will get you to ice stories, and that is were we are supposed to be but--at least that is what they told us but the reality may be different and they may just truncate the whole program, but they did shoot a lot of video and the still guy said he shot 250 still and promised to generate some CD's of what he had, so we'll see. It was the only day we've seen sun, other that that it is daylight 24 hours a day but cloudy. On that particular day it was sunny and no wind, go figure. On thursday morning there was steady rain from 7AM to noon, it was SOOOO fun riding out to the point on the ATV's getting blasted with cold and rain. I went through 3 pairs of gloves(soaking wet) by noon and 3 of the kids bailed, cause they just could not deal with the cold wet conditions and their equipment wasn't that good. We hit out first burial that afternoon, Andrew found it, so the rule is whomever finds it gets to work it, along with the two senior archaeologists. I shot in points on the rest of the pin flags and shot in the elements of the burial as they emerged. We just hit another one at the end of the day but didn't expose it because we couldn't get both of them out before the weekend.
Friday I got stuck in the lab, cause we all have to rotate as supervisor and they had an extern dentist coming out to cast the teeth from all of the burials that were found in 2007. I sat and worked with him for most of the day but there were only 13 of the 24 burials that had dentitions.
So far I'm not seeing any of the wear that we see in California N.A. populations. Nowhere near. (thats for the arch people reading this).
The crew that went out to the point today saw their first polar bear, the bear guards pointed it out, it was about 200 years offshore looking for seals. Now is the time that the ringed and bearded seals have their pups so the bears are right there. the ice is still fast to the shore, some surface meltwater showing which will hasten the breakup as the snow on top melts and percolates down through the sea ice.
One of the kids fathers is a whaling captain and is going to have his whaling party tomorrow, and we've been invited, of course we'll go. I'll let you know what Whale meat, blubber and Muktuk taste like.
That all for now, this 24 hr daylight thing is interesting, its now 11:30 my time and the sky is clearing with pink clouds and some sun peaking through,looks to be about 7 in the evening no tiredness, we all have the same reaction and have to remind ourselves to go to bed, otherwise we'd be up way too late.

2 comments:

summer widow said...

Boy, you really sound busy and "In your element". Do you see the seals too?

jwalsh said...

Wow Dave. Have your gloves dried out yet? Can't wait to hear how whale tastes, but it does bum me out a little. Now rabbit... that's another court story. Love hearing about all the adventures. Keep it coming!