The Archaeologist's Second Best Friend

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One week into the research portion of field school, and there are already several new lessons that I’ve learned. The first, is that while finding artifact after artifact in the field seems amazing at the time, in fact the discovery of artifacts often keeps one motivated in ninety degree weather, the lab portion of dealing with artifacts is often less exciting. Each chip of bone and shard of glass must be cleaned, dried, and catalogued; and I am here to tell you that we found no small amount of either. Lisa, Alex, Jordan and I spent the better part of four days, with no small amount of help from volunteers, cleaning each artifact.

Four days of cleaning brings me to my next lesson: In the field, a trowel is the archaeologist’s best friend. In the lab, the toothbrush becomes your best friend. Somehow the idea of Dr. Jones wielding a toothbrush seems a lot less screenworthy, but I like to think that my classmates and I make the activity look good. There is certainly some benefit to the cleaning though. Many of the units I worked on during the field school were sparse in artifacts, so the cleaning process lets me see everything that was excavated during the field school. It appears we found everything from toy cars and cutlery, to intact bottles and a shattered Santa Claus.

There is much more to be done this summer besides the cleaning and cataloging of artifacts though. Over the next three weeks my remaining classmates and I will have to consider the artifacts that were found and how they relate to each of our research topics , which brings me to my third lesson: nothing is ever as simple as it appears.

At first I had believed that my own research would be quite easy. It is commonly believed that the people who once lived on Indiana Avenue were poor, that the area was blighted. My original assumption was that the artifacts discovered during field school would either support or refute such a narrative. It appears that it is not going to be that easy. Nothing found on site seems to scream poverty or the reverse. We have spoken to elders who once lived in the area and called the avenue “A great place to grow up”, though historically I would risk romanticizing life on the avenue if I simply stated that no poverty existed at all. To share a quote from Dr. Mullins, “The reality is more complicated and will inevitably include some support and refutation alike. Anthropology lives in the grey areas, science wants to live in the Black-and-White.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnE-nRA8gZg