Note from Dr. E: This journal posting is a series of excerpts from Laska's personal journal from the past week or so. Any text in [brackets] has been added by me for clarification.21 July, Ekarma Island: Today we got to get off the boat and on to the island. Setting p camp is boring but important. I helped my dad go around making earth [soil probe] samples to find the best place to dig. No magnificent spots. Better luck later.
22 July, afternoon, Ekarma Island: Walking, walking, walking. I'm sick of it! My dad and I found a digging site today but not supreme. While others started digging dad took Molly [Odell] and I (Molly is a U.W. graduate student) to another possible site just down the beach.
The so-called beach is a strip of giant rock and wooden obstacles. To get to the site we had to walk over big rocks, step over and in streams, and climb up cliffs with grass as tall as yourself. Awesome? If you call breaking an ankle (or worse) awesome.
After stumbling through what felt like a mile of grass we had fallen into and found about ten or more house pits, military and cultural. How come I was always stumbling along behind? I must have fallen at least every two feet or so! On the way back when I was a few meters away from dad he called to me "did you find any pits over there?" At that moment I plummeted straight down finding myself in a pit. "I think so, dad!"
Another comical moment was as I was sliding down a cliff. My dad told us to slide controllably. The next moment Molly looks, I'm hanging by two clumps of grass, hat over face!
Gosh, I am sounding like a spoiled brat who wants nothing more than luxury. I don't want to give that impression because really I never seriously broke any bones. I think all this is awesome and way more than I deserve, and I'd much rather sleep in a tent than in the biggest of mansions. I've got to think more about what comes out on paper than what my hand wants to write.
**27 July, afternoon, Ekarma Island: **The past three days I have been a slug. On July 23 my mom [Laada Bilaniuk] was cook's helper and I had to stay in the tent to help my mom baby-sit. When I could, I read my book instead of writing.
The next day I stayed in our campsite because dad said I could probably help more around here. I could have gone up to the first digging siteto get off my butt. Did I? NO!
Unfortunately today was a repeat.
The first of my not-so-lazy days I went up to our first digging site and helped out there. I found some flakes! Flakes are pieces of stone that got chipped off when one of the early inhabitants had made a tool. Some of the things we have found here are: flakes, Okhotsk pottery, calcined (burned) bone, stone tools with "retouch" (a flake that has been re-chipped to make a tool), and obsidian tools. I got to help rinse off the artifacts. They're COOL!
Today we saw orca whales! They were far off so I could not get a picture or see them clearly myself. But in the distance I saw their fins coming out of the water and back in. I hope to see big sea animals like that closer up sometime (hopefully on this trip).
29 July, afternoon, Ekarma Island: After lunch in the dining tent, I went back with my dad to Ekarma 1 [one of the two archaeological sites our team excavated]. While I was washing off some rocks to see if they had been used as hammer stones or other prehistoric tools, my dad worked on excavating some whale bones.
Rock Scotch: To get to Ekarma 1 is tricky. This is because the beach is not the soft sandy beach I think of when someone says "beach." It is filled with rocks and boulders, and there are even a few streams to cross!
Rock Scotch is a sport I have invented, in which you must go down the beach efficiently. Each time you go a tiny bit faster, but another goal is not slipping/falling or hurting yourself. When you are really good it feels like you're floating or dancing over the rocks.
The next level is when you are on wet rocks. Wet rocks are much harder to play/walk on and that's when it can get frustrating. I experienced this on a walk all the way down the beach (around a mile and a half walk over all the rocks and boulders). I still was not very good at that level.
We have finished digging and tomorrow my dad will be drawing diagrams of the soil layers. Tephra is natural dirt and cultural layers are where all the artifacts are found. A cultural layer is often black with charcoal from anthropogenic fire (a human-started fire). I like using all these scientific names in my writing. It is fun!
8 August, Rasshua Island: From August third to August fifth we were on the boat hiding behind an island waiting for a storm to go by and let us move to Rasshua. It was supposed to only take two days but it was nice to re-coup.
Today is our second day on Rasshua. My dad has opened two test-pits and one of them contains many albatross (and other bird's) bones. I have been helping Mike (a zoo-archaeologist) collect bones, flakes, etc. from the surface of a semi-steep cliff next to Test Pit #1. It may not be the proper name, but I call this "surfacing."
A hypothesis we were testing was if the ancient residents threw their trash (our artifacts) off the side of the cliff or made a pile outside their houses and it rolled down there over time. Although we have no proof, Mike thinks it is quite probable that the antique trash rolled down the hill. The reason for this is when we dug a small hole at the base of the cliff we found one thin cultural layer and only small flakes. As we worked our way up the steep hill we found more bone, less flakes, thicker layers, and more layers. Nearest to the top it was a bone jack-pot!
Why there were fewer flakes, I do not know; why we found a ringed seal's tooth is unknown. Ringed seals like ice and at least in the summer there is no ice here.
Yesterday on a nice walk down the hardware store (the beach), my mom, dad, sister and I found many glass floats. And we though we would not find any! My mom discovered a golf-ball sized one. I was surprised to find an un-attached heel of a high heel shoe.
Some days ago I had a dream about my friends in Seattle. I really wish I had a better way to contact with them. I wish I could see them and have them tell me what's going on at home. The only thing that keeps me from being completely isolated from friends and family is this journal.
--Laska