Playing catch up, this post is from a few days ago...
Today was a hot one! It was a very sunny morning with a heat index 102 degrees and the afternoon winds that usually help cool things off were nowhere to be found today. I drank all 3 of my liters of water before lunch when that amount of water usually lasts me all day, yikes! Despite the heat, we accomplished a lot today and I’m feeling pretty good about that.
We opened a third unit, Unit 5, in the middle of an established structure near the main house and will hopefully be able to discern what the building’s purpose was from this season’s excavations. The previous archaeologist who worked on the site left poor reports of his findings and may have been off in his assessment of the structure as a kitchen/slave barracks, so it will be very interesting to see what we find! Based on a previous investigation of the structure’s wall profiles we are inclined to think that it may have been some kind of workshop as quite a bit of iron and glass slag, a stony waste matter separated from metals during the smelting or refining of ore, were found. However we are also finding a good deal of ceramic sherds, bones, sea shells, fish scales and even the fragment of a kitchen knife so as of now it’s still a conundrum.
We’ve only been in the field for about three weeks now although it seems like much longer. My hands are finally starting to callous over previous blisters and get used to the daily beating. What we archaeologists lovingly call ‘trowel hand,’ or something of a decrepit claw, is in full effect for my right hand and getting there for my left. Being an archaeologist is like aging prematurely…all your joints ache and lock up from all the crouching, crunching and manipulating yourself into these small earthen torture chambers otherwise known as excavations. We keep joking that we won’t know if any of us catch this newly hyped mosquito-born pathogen Chikungunya, of which a main symptom is arthritis-like joint pain, because our poor joints are already abused on a daily basis. Thankfully the mosquitos here aren't that plentiful and the ones I have seen/been bitten by so far haven’t been the crazy Asian tiger mosquito that hosts the disease so there shouldn’t be much cause for worry…. I hope!
In setting up the new unit we had to pull back the tarp that had been protecting the structure to find three giant, albeit harmless, toads and a well-established, very harmful fire ant colony! The new unit is not too far off from the ants and I feel it is only a matter of time before an incident occurs. I am getting pretty good at avoiding the little buggers though and after being covered with black bitey ants in Belize last summer, and I mean literally having ants IN my pants and shirt...basically all over, all I have to say is, ‘bring it!’
A photo of the ant colony near Unit 5
I mean just look at that stinger....yikes!!
It seems the more I travel, the more insane insects and diseases I encounter (so far the majority of them in Belize) and there’s usually an adjustment period where I think, ‘Why the fuck do these things even exist?!’ but then I have to admit that they're fascinating creatures. I can’t say the project volunteers agree with me though, haha. Usually when I start rambling about this crazy bug or that deadly disease they just look at me like I’m crazy for ever wanting to work in Belize in the first place let alone go back for more. Well, I must be a masochist because given the opportunity I just can’t stay away!
No comments:
Post a Comment