Playing with Dirt

So I started work yesterday and already have this weird sunburn on the side of my left temple where I apparently forgot to spread sunscreen. It looks dumb and I will probably have a dark patch on my face for the rest of the summer after the redness fades... *sigh*.
The past two days haven't been bad but I wouldn't say they were great either. My crew, Historic 1 (we are actually the only Historic crew for the company but last year there were two...) was sent out with a Prehistoric crew to work on the Hope site in Maple, which had a helluva lot of longhouses. The usual features came up in spades -- loads of posts, walls and actually a pretty decent midden. I found a bone bead, a bone awl, and a burnt corn kernel, amongst other items. It's apparently the first bead of the season for anyone on the Historic crew. Last year I found my forte for finding beads and whenever I find one Katie and Wes kind of groan; I think they are jealous. ;) I am guessing that Aaron and Steve will catch onto this pretty soon as well.
Yes, I know... if you've just realized my crew has 4 guys on it and you are involved in archaeology you are probably amazed. For the past 6 years since I started studying archaeology, both at Laurier and UBC, my peers were 90% women. This year, everything has changed. It's kind of interesting. Everyone on the crew is dating someone or married except for Steve. Steve is from Quebec although he is just graduating from U of T and managed to end up at ASI. He is amusing to have around because we have to sometimes explain English slang to him, for instance, the phrase 'camel toe'. It's good times all around as you can probably imagine. Potty mouths abound!

The only thing I am a bit jealous of at the moment is that Wes and Aaron were trained in April at the office to catalogue our massive backlog of artifacts from last summer. So on days when Katie is off with our Grad-all scraping down topsoil at whatever site, Wes and Aaron get to sit home and catalogue artifacts while Steve and I will be reassigned to some other crew. It's a bit of a bummer especially since I asked Aaron how long it takes to get through a site's artifacts and he said it's currently taking about two weeks to get through all the bags and boxes from one site. I assume that it will take even longer when they are actually out in the field because I cannot imagine that they go home after a day in the field and work on the artifacts.
I am crossing my fingers that the office realizes how slowly the progress really is and that at some point they will ask Steve and I to come in for some similar training. There isn't really any need to have us assigned to the Prehistoric crews since they usually have a full crew of 5-6 people and we are just surplus. I wish they would put us where we were somewhat needed (and doing what I would prefer to be doing). I have also heard that there is not as much Historic work for us this summer, so there could very well be several days when I am reassigned to another crew. Argh! I always feel a bit out of my element being shifted around to other crews and meeting at different places in the morning and going to different drop off points in the afternoons. You have to adjust your typical habits of digging to whatever the custom is on the other crews/sites. It's just weird.

In the past two days I have eased into the digging and mapping again but it's in a prehistoric context. I am excited to get to a historic site and remember the procedures for surface survey and collection as well as excavating features. The forms and protocol are different between Prehistoric and Historic so I could be a little confused, but I am sure it will all come back to me.
Tomorrow, we are heading down to the Grange at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Apparently we will be doing test pits in the backyard trying to locate an old veranda that used to wrap around that part of the house. It's the crew's first foray into urban archaeology! We are usually sent out to the burbs, if you really consider Bowmanville, Newmarket, Richmond Hill and Brampton suburbs of Toronto. I also found out that we have our first road trip this year to the St. Catharine's area. It's gonna be interesting packing 5 people, luggage, and archy gear into the van. Being the only other girl on the crew, Katie and I will be bunking together, whereas I imagine the 3 guys will be jammed into one room together (the thought makes me laugh a bit). We'll see when the time comes.
Anyways, I figure this is enough of an update for now. I am still trying to unpack my four suitcases of stuff so I should try and work on it a bit tonight. Actually, I have two already finished and put away and another two to go. Basically, in order to fit all my current stuff into my room again, I have to go through old clothes and figure out what I just won't ever be wearing again. My grad school weight gain has really fucked up my wardrobe... I hope to alleviate some of this tragic poundage this summer. Which reminds me, I have to sort out the transfer of my gym membership from Vancouver to TO. Another project I have this summer is to sort through the books in the basement and get rid of things I don't want to keep or that I have multiple copies of (yes, it has happened occasionally that I own two copies of one book). There also seem to be a lot of books and games in the computer area that are completely obsolete in relevance now. For example, 'Word 97', 'Office 97 Professional', 'Powerpoint 2002', Idiot's Guide to Excel for Windows 95'... I think that my family suffers from severe Pack Rat Syndrome. We need a good purge cuz the space in this house really cannot accomodate the random and forever expanding possessions of 4 adults. Maybe I should nominate us for TLC's Clean Sweep, but on the other hand I think it would be totally traumatic. I have to learn to come to terms with not keeping stuff that I haven't used in over a year. It's over, therefore, it should be gone. Okay.