A change of pace was in store for me today. Instead of joining the survey team, I was put with the excavation team. They have been conducting excavations and test pits at the group of depressions we found on our first full day here. I was happy for the change of venue and was anxious to find artifacts from long ago that would be collected and processed.
With our gear and personal backpacks in tow, we headed up for our fifteen-minute walk to the site. There were four projects underway there. Jodi had excavated a giant hole that went as far down as the place where the land had actually been under the Bering Sea. It had taken her an entire day and half of the next day to record and describe each of the layers.
Jodi dug this entire hole herself. It is over 5 feet deep and almost 2 meters by 1 meter in size. She also identified each volcanic layer all the way to the bottom, where the land was under the sea. She estimates that the oldest layer is 10,000 years old.
Jodi explained to me the formations of the tephra. They each have a specific name and we are looking for artifacts below the Dvoinoi layer. I asked her where the Dvoinoi volcano was and she had some explaining to do. Apparently the layers are mostly formed by the eruptions of Shiveluch in our distant landscape but because there are so many eruptions they name each one. It's sort of like having one parent, Shiveluch, and having many children, each with their own specific name. So they are related but don't necessary look alike.
Irina and Rebecca were completing a 1 meter by 1 meter controlled excavation. They carefully clean away the soil in 10 centimeter increments. So, they take off the entire first layer, screen all the soil and collect anything they find. Then they take off the next 10 centimeters and repeat the process. Jodi and I were screening the soil and gathering the artifacts. Rebecca was putting them in bags and labeling them for processing.
I use the screen to sift through bucket load after bucket load of soil. After the loose soil falls away, we look through the remaining items for artifacts.
Next we moved on the test pit. It was in the third depression and started out as a 50 square centimeter hole. But, when they unearthed a hearth the hole increased until it was about 2 meters wide on each side. It was a rather unusual find. There was a hearth with a lot of stones and charcoal in random locations around the stones. However, there were very few other finds. We were expecting bones and flakes and several other artifacts, but all we found were three significant pieces, one projectile point, which is a scientific name for an arrowhead, one knife and one piece of calcedne, a white glass like rock.
Jodi had all the luck today. She found the three biggest artifacts from the hearth test pit. This is a projectile point from a stone tool.
Being careful not to move the rock and charcoal features of the excavation site, Jodi and Rebecca remove soil for screening.
In the hearth site, we found a classic fire cracked rock. These rocks break from the extreme heat of repeated fires.
After nine hours at the site, we called it a day. The work is labor and time intensive but we had made good progress today. We packed up our gear and headed back to camp. The day had been so hot and windless that a few of us decided to go down the beach to the Bering Sea for a swim. It was refreshing and we were actually a curiosity for the local seals. They stuck around the entire time we were swimming and for a while afterwards.
As we took a swim in the sea curious seals came to watch us. They are the little black dots you see in the water.
Birthday Celebration
Alyesa is happy it is her 18th birthday and Jodi arrives at breakfast with a bouquet of flowers for her.
Today we had a special occasion at camp. It was Alyesa's 18th birthday. Along with flowers from Jodi and a special expedition shirt from her friends, we celebrated with a toast and a cake made of caramel and cookies pieced together. I'm sure she will always remember where she spent her 18th birthday.
The girls make a cake out of cookies and caramel coating. She is wearing her expedition shirt that they gave her for her birthday and it says something like adventurous spirit on it in Russian.