Square Holes and Temp Agencies, Oh and Indiana Jones

So as most of you know, or you will find out now, I am an archaeologist.  It is what I went to school for, and when I can find work, it is what my preferred job is.  Now, let me educate you guys on what being an archaeologist entails.  Every day I go to work I find pyramids, get chased down by natives, find piles of gold, use my bull whip to lasso myself across a huge snake pits, save the damsel in distress, and dig up dinosaur bones.  Pretty cool, right?  Well, not so much.

You see REAL archaeology involves a lot of knowledge and methodology that you learn how to do from school (not TV programs); you can't do it willy nilly despite how smart you think you are, or what you've taught yourself.  And NO you can't just go to a temp agency so you can dig holes in the ground too.  Oh and also, yes I am a petite, blonde woman, but I do know what I'm doing - I don't have to be a crotchety old guy to be able to identify a tertiary chalcedony flake that is .2mm in size, or know that I am not looking for gold and dinosaur bones (seriously people, archaeology, geology and paleontology while overlapping, requires different set of knowledge and skills!).

So hey, while being an archaeologist sounds all cool and adventurous it does get tedious (wwhhhhaaaaaa?).  That's right, I'm admitting it, but I know everyone thinks about it at some point. I mean, I know all archaeologists know they have the most badass job ever, but clay and sterile soil really suck.  For all you laymen out there this is kind of what I mean.  The first thing you have to do before you ever excavate a site is test it to find the site boundaries, or to see how culturally relevant a place was.  So what do you do for that?  You live and breathe the book "Holes."  You test around digging holes that have a specific width and a specific depth, and are also a specific distance from each other, trying to find signs of life.  Now with this in mind you have to remember that you are looking for historic and prehistoric stuff.  What does this mean?  Historic is from when people from Europe arrived here (so after Columbus) to about 50 years ago...do you know how trashy people are?  It's hard to identify a lot of the stuff especially considering we use such similar things today.  Then there is prehistoric stuff.  With this you have to be able to identify all the different types of rock material, whether something has been used as a hammer, whether there was a post hole, and the list goes on and on.

Now, there are often times, when you get on a project and you are finding nothing because the soil has been turned around so much, there just isn't any evidence of things.  This is when things get boring because you are digging and screening and finding nothing *yawn.*  But it is a necessary task in order to learn about the cultural relevance of an area.  Now keep in mind while you are performing all of this INCREDIBLY HARD LABOR (at least compared with your normal jobs) you are also recording every little thing that you notice down because it is part of the scientific method.  That's right folks, archaeology is one giant experiment that you have to be able to replicate if necessary.  It's really a daunting thing because if you fuck up on a job like this, that history/prehistory is lost FOREVER.  How many people can say that there job literally affects our understanding of the past?

I can hear some of you now asking, "Hard labor?  Don't you just dig around with paintbrushes or something?"  Again, wrong field, and wrong time.  Yes that is a necessary thing if you are working on some sort of excavation.  Usually involves bones, pottery, jewelry, ya know the really neat 'as seen on TV' stuff.  So what I mean by hard labor is you have to carry all of your equipment out to the test site.  This includes several shovels, screens (which can way up to 40 lbs when clogged with sticky, wet clay), your personal gear (mine usually ways around 20lbs, depending on the task), a digging/breaker bar which ways around 17lbs.  Of course the carrying of the equipment is divided by the people on the crew, but you usually need about one of those items per person (exception is digging bar, but you need one for every two people).  Now, you have to not only use these tools for 8-10 hours a day, but you have to lug them with you from test hole to test hole, which can be anywhere from 4 to 12+ a day.  Hard labor.  No joke.

Now I am not saying this is all of archaeology, but it is a big part of archaeology in the US.  It's called CRM and it usually has to happen whenever something is being built or expanded.  Now my one last tidbit of advice to all of you non archaeologists out there.  If you find something like an arrowhead while you are hiking that is awesome, but you shouldn't take it.  What you can do is pick it up, look at it, photograph it (if you want), but you really shouldn't take it SIMPLY for the fact that it can really fuck up future projects.  What you need to do is call someone with BLM or SHPO (State Historic Preservation Office) and tell them what you found, so it can be noted for the future.  If you have a IPhone or something, you can whip that out and get the GPS coordinates to make it more accurate.  Bury it a little so no one else finds it.   Don't be a jerk by taking it and ruining history.