Day 15: Pyramids. Fun. Sun: Just your average day off!

The only words to describe today are: glorious and hilarious. 

Last night was a significant party night.

Significant in that we were farewelling 3 of the dig-house crew :(

Significant in the amount that was drunk. 

Significant in the fact that everyone on the dig-team managed to stay awake past 8pm at night :O

Long story short: Glorious. 

Stories were exchanged, plans were formed and hilarity was had.

Some people who will not be named danced the night away and drank 4-8 too many Fayum sunrises (some devilish concoction of tequila and tang)

The morning was not kind to them.

Those of us who were able to not faint, vomit or otherwise moan and be sad made our way to breakfast after a sleep in till 7am. 

Breakfast cake. 

The best kind of cake. 

As Rachel says: 

ITS CAKE!

AND ITS FOR BREAKFAST!

ITS CAKE!

AND ITS FOR BREAKFAST!

repeat x100.

Soon enough we were on our way to the pyramid tour.

The first time we have been allowed to be tourists since getting to egypt.

10 of us took the van, 2 of our Egyptian work crew, me, rach, slaggy, Sebastian, Nathalie, The Australian, Imperial Rach, and the driver. 

And so it began. The greatest teasing of an australian of our time.

Most of the dig-team are american or kiwi.

Especially now that we said farewell to 3 dutch and 1 sweedish crew members. 

Anyway.

There is one australian.

STRAYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

On the way to Lahun (our first port of call for the day) we begun informing the Americans about Australian culture.

Most of this informing revolved around badly singing that stupid matilda song. somthing somthing billabong. somthing somthing somthing matilda with me. 

Then some background to WHERE THE BLOODY HELL ARE YA?

Before moving onto STRAYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, VB, Stubbies and Dingos stealling babies.

The australian lost her shit.

Uncontrollable laughter for about 40 minutes.

Even our Egyptian crew got in on it.

Teasing the australian. 

Talking in a ridiculous egyptian-australian accent. 

Oh god it was good.

Any way. this continued all day.

Literally.

All day.

I will spare you from most of it.

But know this.

I think we broke the australian.

Sorry the STRAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYLIAN. 

Looking pretty at Hawaera

The really cool thing about being in Egypt as an archaeologist is that you get to do a bunch of crap that normal tourists dont. 

We were extremely lucky to have some awesome Egyptian dig-crew with us who sweet talked the guards into letting us get down to the canal and look up close at the labarynth remains from Hawera.

checkit outsssssss the labarynth remains!

The next thing we knew was that we were being given tea to drink from the guards :3

It was rather delicious. 

So delicious.

But yet. 

So much sugar.

SOOOO MUCH SUGAR.

The thing about egypt is.

Sugar.

Everywhere.

At all times.

OH GOD MEETING TIME.
SHIT.

WILL WRITE AFTER MEETING AND DINNER.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

:D

Its quite a nice view

Ohhhhhh a landscape shot

Sammy and me at the tombs of the nobles at Lahun.

Me looking at bones and sculls and things.

Bones with mummy wrappings still in-tact

ohhhh look another glorious landscape shot. This time of maydoum.

Offering vessel from Maydoum.

Our dinner at Fayoum city. I have never eaten so much food in my life. 

words will come later. for now. pictures. HOORAH!

Day 13 and 14: A snake called snakey

Today was hard.

The team was split.

Hearth excavators were left back at the first set of transects taht we did yesterday whilst 4 of us moved on to the north-west. 

Me and Rachel ran the total station again today and directed all the survey whilst the rest of the crew were split between artifact analysis and hearth excavation. 

In other news it was decided today that we are going to rename the total station to GLADOS as if you ignore the green paint for abit, she does kinda look like you know. her. 

She even sounds like it.

Point stored.

Connected to total station.

Point stored.

Out of range.

Kill them all.

All of them.

Now.

In other other other news: Snakey :3

Distance shot of snakey in her desert habitat.

GLADOS the total station

The fire on the deck tonight. I dont even. 

Close up of snakey-chan (also known as Snake-Kitty)

So tonight is party night. We are farewelling several of the Karanis team from the dig-house :( This means that we will be having a BBQ. Which means FIRE EVERYWHERE D:

The upside is that tomorow is day off. which means. SLEEP IN TILL 6AM. :333333 

These are some words I never thought I would utter D:

Party party time.

L8rz nerds. 

Day 12: Glorious return to the field

OH GOD I CANT REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED ON THIS DAY D:

This is why I cant be trusted D:

This is why I cannot have nice things!

LOOK PHOTOS TO DISTRACT YOU!

Justine the "house cat"

Smiley-faces in the sand :3

The endless desert!

Day 11: More sickness. And boredom.

Today was another sick day.

Hoorah some might say... another day home from the field... another day not having to wake up at 4am... and work in the sun for 11 hours...

But not I.

Oh piss is what I say.

Because you havent experienced boredom till you have experienced sitting all day at the dig house with no one else there.

Seriously.

The dig house is located miles from anywhere... and the only things for friends are ferral dogs and Justine the cat, who is aloof and cares not for my mortal needs.

Long story short, the only things to do here are sleep and eat.

And when you are sick, you dun wanna eat.

So sleep it was.
All day.
Fuckit.

BUT!
OMG!
Highlight of the day!!!!!
Sandstorm in the evening :333333 WOOO!
AND IT RAINED.
DA FUQ?

Egypt dosent do rain.

Ok when I say rain, I mean more of a tiny tiny sprinkle of water.
BUT.
IT WAS THERE.
IT WAS REAL.

I need to get back to the field.
Im going crazy with nothing to do.
Sickness or not im going back to the field again tomorow. 

Day 10: Get down with the sickness

I had been doing so well.
So so well.

Until this morning.

Awaken.
Nope.
Not going to happen.

Return to bed.

God. Dammit.

So sick.
To quote Mark Antony: I am dying, egypt, dying.

Day 9: The highs and lows of archaeology

Today started without hitch (for a change).
And later.
Sleep in till 6am.
We could have slept till 7.
But the cattle market had other plans for us.
That shit is loud. So. Loud.

The entire Fayum project team piled into 2 cars, which was a tight squeeze, and set off into the desert, heading for Dimeh.

After several minutes lost in the desert, driving around in the barren landscape, jumping around and bumping all over the place we found a way back onto the main road.

Main road is abit generous.

Main dust track.

Pull up onto the dust track, fail the first time.
Protests come from behind, perhaps we should get out of the rover?
Simon: "Whats the worst that can happen?"

Now. Every. Single. Time he has said this, somthing worse has happened.
And this time was no exception.

2 seconds later we are all pouring out of the van.
Flat tire.
Shit.
The guys set to work dealing with the tire.
However.
This is the desert.
Sand sinks.
What transpires in the end is 3 archaeologists digging with trowels to move enough sand to get the new tire on... fighting a losing battle against nature.

Whilst hilarious in some respects, the reality that we are actualy in the middle of the desert, with nothing around, kinda hit.

We dug faster.

awwwwwwwwww shittttttttttttttt.

finally the whole situation was dealt with (phew) and we set of to Dimeh again, only 30 minutes late... whats the worst that can happen... right?

Finally we arrived at Dimeh, a site similar to Karanis in time-frame (Ptolemaic through greco-roman). 

The striking thing about Dimeh however is that the walls all still stand. 8m high. 

Crazy stuff. 

The walls are breathtaking, seeming to defy gravity, stretching up towards the sky in seeming endless fashion.

Dimeh used to be closed to the lake-edge, but now it is this bizzare port-town in the middle of a desert. Walls, houses, temples all on a raised structure up above a desert depression. 

Panorama of the walls from the west

From the underground vaults of one of the houses

Panorama from the desert looking back towards the main walls of Dimeh

The huge walls of Dimeh and the surrounding landscape

Looking up at the walls from below

Quasa el Sagah

Panorama of Quasa el sagah

Top down view from when we climed up onto of the temple

The next stop on our journey after Dimeh was Quasa el sagah.

To get there however we had to cross a large open area of loose sand. A little bit like the childrens song: bear hunt, we could not go under it, or round it, yep... we had to go over it...

Now, driving over this stuff, in a land rover filled with 8 archaeologists is probably less than ideal.

Simon begins to utter his famous words.

We stop him quickly.

The order comes to think light thoughts and pray to the gods.

Instead we sing.

We sing to make us lighter.

We were flying without wings...

Anywhoooo... The site is one of the earliest remaining temples in egypt. The temple itself is not the most magestic or outstanding structure ive seen here, but its simplicity certinally has somthing charming about it.

Of course, we were not content with just sitting and observing the chapel from the ground.

Oh no.

Instead we clambered up on top of the structure.

Our fearless leader Hamman has this thing for terrible 90s music, and subsequently he left the truck playing music at our stop over...

What transpired next is one of those "what happens in egypt, stays in egypt" moments... 

Standing some 5 meters up in the air, on a stone temple fashioned during the old kingdom, me and scotty reproduced the bon-jovi living on a prayer video. and then the backstreet boys. and then yeah, you get the idea.

Dancing ontop of the old kingdom temple. 

It was definitley an experience im pretty safe to say very few people have experienced before...

This was alot of excitement for one day, however it was by no means at its end...

Nek minnit the guards are pulling Marcus aside and asking him to please write the sign for them. He obliges. We can now add signwrigting to our groups list of things it does.

Archaeology.

Programming.

Paleo-geology.

Human Osteology.

Lithic Analysis.

Signwriting.

yep. good stuff.

Marcus the signwriter.

From here it was a short shot up the road to Kom W.

This is where everything turned from happy happy time.

To sadness. 

To anger.

To despair.

On arrival at Kom W we found our fence had been destroyed.

And so had the Kom

A 20m deep hole drilled down through layers of stratified deposits.

We all just kind of stared in horror at the sight.

One of the most precious sites for understanding the neolithic. Destroyed.

Why?

How?

What kind of stupidity and desperateness leads people to drill so deep into the ground at a site where there is nothing other than 10,000 yo pottery, rocks and bones... 

Its baffling.

Its soul destroying.

Its so sad.

After a quick search around we found nothing to ID the guys, so we removed their ladder and set home with mixed emotions. Such a good day ended so sadly. 

Day 8: Karanis and Turkey

Finally we called a shabib-mobile to transport the rest of us to Karanis.
The day was outstanding.

The americans working at the dig house are all stationed out at Karanis and so the day posed the opportunity for the Kiwi team to see some greco-roman stuff and structural things :3

Karanis is an amazing site, really really big, pottery everywhere (Josh got excited).

Selection of pottery from Karanis

Panorama of the bathhouse site

Panorama of the kiln site

Panorama of the whole site from the west hill, looking towards the temple

The archway outside the michigan dig-house

The whole site was origionally covered by the Michigan dig team way back ing the late 20's and is now being revisited by the Fayum project (the project we work on).

Its a really surreal experience walking around the area with walls sticking out almost skeletally from the ground.

The sheer amount of pottery littering the ground is breathtaking and the winding alleyways of the houses is both confusing and breathtaking.

Part of the day was set aside for comaring the 20s photos to the modern excavations, and it was really striking how much has changed in such a short period of time. Whole levels of structures have disapeared, diagnositc features have been removed, walls have toppled and sand has settled over large portions of the site.

The other striking feature was the sheer amount of looting which occured across the site. Its shamefull to think how much damage has been done to this amazing site from people looking for gold or pharonic items. We have already seen the damage done to neolithic sites where we work (20m pit of death through Kom K) and seeing it again here really drives home how desperate some people must be to damage their heritage in such a way :(

In the afternoon we were all feeling abit sickly so took afew hours out to chill and watch some Indiana Jones, resting in preparation for Thanks-Giving dinner which was planned for this eve.

On returning to the dining room after our little movie session we found it decorated to all manner, streamers, decorations, tinsel, nametags :3 It was truly amazing.

Turkey (8Kgs worth) was laid out with gravy, mashed potatos, sweet-potatoes. So much deliciousness!

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH.

Now, in Egypt you never know when your next good meal will come from so you tend to stock up. This meant shoving our faces with turkey till we couldnt swallow any more down.

I regret nothing.

The next step was to get all emotional.
Going around the table saying things that we are thankful for in the past year.
For me I have had a mixed year, and this dig represents the start of my new life overseas. So for that I am thankful for the opportunity to be here, for the friends I have made through the year, and for amazing colleagues I have from University of Auckland whom I couldnt do this without.
The reality that much of what I have here will be over in 4 weeks time really hit me tonight and it was a failed struggle later to hold back tears as we all talked over our years and future plans.

But soon enough it was time to stop being sissys, man up and watch some quality video. The post-grad diaries.

All of us are post-graduates here and the truths in this movie really struck home. Watching this with our supervisors was honestly the most hilarious thing in the world.
Simon almost died of laughter.

The hand-turkeys made by the dig-team crew :3

One of the kiwis hand-turkeys / hand-kiwi

Movies on the roof :3

So there it is.
An amazing thanks-giving.
With amazing people.
In an amazing place.

Thanks-giving set up :3 :3 :3 :3 :3

Day 8: Y u no work car!????

So last night was party night. 

It was good.

Very. Very. Good.

Rather than the normal tequila shots here, we do these things called Fayum Sunrises... Which is salt, tequila with tang mixed in, followed by a chaser of tang.

Tang, to those not familiar with it, is like, really, really, really disgusting raro. 

We hypothesise that it basically kills all life inside you.

Even the ants wont touch that shit, which gives you a fairly good indication as to how foul this stuff is.

Long story short. 4 of those later. Followed by whiskey = good night. 

Wake up this morning to 3 of our crew dog-sick with the stomouch flu... Intresting to note that these were the individuals who did not partake in the tang shots... therby emperically proving our hypothesis that alcahol is the way to go. And that tang will kill everything.

Take note. 

Alcahol. 

Tang.

Never get sick.

So not the best start to the morning...

But wait. 

It gets worse.

Go to start the Land Rovers... nothing... not a thing...

Dead.

Fuck.

3 hours later. nothing. 

The men pulling parts from the car. Wont start. Shit. 

2 arabic men yelling at each other and removing various parts from beneath the bonnet and all the male dig crew standing round back-seat directing. NO TAKE THAT PART. REMOVE THE CONTACTS. OMG NO DO THIS. GOSH.

This whole thing takes us back to the first day when the steering and brakes went dodgy on the car and Hamman said "OH TOMOROW WE GO FIX IN SHAHALLAH" which basically means god willing we will fix it... so probably never. nope. definitley not going to fix it. ever. 

Long story short. Didnt fix car on first day. Now we are fucked. 

meanwhile Slaggy, Rach and I went and made marmite and chip sandwiches and chilled on the deck.

SO. No Kom W trip today, but will be rolling to Karanis in afew hours :3 

Excite.

Karanis is a ballah site (spent some time there in 2010 when I was last over here in egypt) and the dig team this year have opened up a heap of new trenches round the granary areas so excite to see whats crackin there. Whilst i adore my neolithic rocks and pottery its a nice change of pace going to greco-roman sites and seeing structures :3

Day 7: Ke$ha in the field

Today was largely transforming the Ke$ha CD to fit archaeological themes. very productive work. So far we have nailed down (badly) the first song.

The first of many.
That we hope to release.
Make our millions.
God knows we never will looking at rocks.

So far we have the following:
To the tune of Tick-Tock:

We wake up in the morning at 4am,
Put on our glassess,
Pack our bags,
Gonna hit the Fayum,
Before we leave,
Pack the truck with gear and ruck-sacks,
Coz when we leave for the field we aint coming back.

Were talkin,
Field boots on our toes (toes)
Kaki coloured clothes (clothes)
Second breakfast is bread loaves (loaves)

Dont stop,
Shoot in that rock,
Holy shit its getting hot,
Theodolite,
Jesus christ,
Stone tools all around (round)
oh
oh UHHH OHHH
Theodolite shut dowwwwnn.

Thats all we have so far... so uhh... yeah... we will be singing this for thanksgiving presentations tomorow, so will be working on finishing up this musical masterpiece, and will later be releasing this little gem to the world.

In other news we did actually do some work today.
4 transects nutted out (in double time), and then a walking outing to the lower K-Pits.
Afew paleolithic flakes around, a couple of tools and some bits of neolithic pottery.

Approaching the K-Pits is the 20m deep pit of death from where the locals had tried to mine for pharonic gold... sadly they dug through some of the best preserved neolithic deposits. sadness :(

In other news we decided on animal counterparts and radio call-signs for the crew today...

My animal was decided as a zebra... I dont even... Zebras are like... the retarded but adorable counterparts to the equine world. To me this seems like my team are telling me that im a retard, and that im also stripey...

As for the radio call-sign it was decided that I would be H-Kitty... Like hello-kitty... but gangsta...

Speaking of H-Kitty. the watch (refer to day 1) is holding up well... the diamontes act like some kind of disco-ball in the field... the strap is slowly becoming more archaeology looking, regressing into a kaki state from its origional baby pink.

OTHER NEWS: tomorow is thanksgiving and our first day off since hitting the field... this means three things...
1: we get to sleep in till 5am
2: we get to go on snazzy field trips
3: omg omg omg turkey for dinner

As its a night off it also means party ahoy and movies. But for now its downloading the days data dumps, processing them and then playing a couple of hours of egyptian TF2 pub...

All my experiences of egyptian TF2 so far have taught me that they treat the game like they treat real life... often wildly firing at absolutley nothing for hours on end, running in circles, then firing more guns into the air...

Yeah. Sunrise is a cool time out here.

Looking down into the pit of death at the lower K-Pits

Rach and Matt taking a break at the K-Pits.

Day 4: I would walk 500 miles, and then I did walk 500 more

Today dawned not so fine (refer to GMI and Fayum blogs for the in joke here) for Slaggy... Slaggy made the fatal error of not consuming alcahol with every meal, and subsequently the bugs residing in said delicious food were free to procreate and make her very, very, very sick. The rest of us alcaholics were fine n' dandy. The overarchign morale of the story here is that alcahol is good.

Drink it. lots of it.

So, regretably we had to leave habibi-slag behind to be sick, and the rest of us headed to the field without her.

Several hours later we were feeling like swapping places with Slaggy. Todays work began with a 5 hour field walk looking for hearths and grinding stones. This seems like fun I guess until you factor in the 35 degree heat. the beating sun and the lack of any kind of breeze. 500 meter transect walks felt like 500000000000m and slowly our legs began to feel like lead.

Midday. Mid-hell. We stop for water break, I have never, ever, ever been so glad to skull back 2 litres in one go. It was seriously like a water-gasm.
My god.
So.
Good.

Back to the field.
Feeling like feet dragging abit. lead legs.
All of a sudden this changed.

5 shots ring out across the field.
All of us spring to attention looking for the shooter. Hoping like all fuck they wernt firing towards our location.

At this point it is probably worthwhile to note that gun shots are not a foreign thing in arabic countries. Its like they wake up and think HEY IM A BIT BORED TODAY, TIME TO GO FIRE MY GUN... or...

HEY ITS 223 DAYS TILL MY BIRTHDAY TIME TO GO FIRE A GUN... OH LOOK ITS SUNNY BETTER GO FIRE MY GUN... LOOK FIELD OF WHITE PEOPLE... BETTER GO FIRE MY GUN...

Fatefully Dr. Simon decides to take this moment to say, hey, this field is kind of like the valley of death, and instead of the 500, we are the 9... shotguns to the left of us, AK's to the right...

>.< yes. into the valley of death rode the 9 archaeologists...

Soon enough a battered range rover pulled up next to our field area, shotguns out all 4 windows, 4 jovial arabic men jump out and greet us warmly, gesture around abit, jump back into their vehicle and zoom off into the distance, shots are fired again as they get over the sand-dune.

keep calm and carry on.

just keep walking.
and walking.
and walking.
and walking.

Download went significantly smoother this eve (thank jesus) and all our data is starting to look pretty snappy :3
We are all settling into field life really well... sickness, gunfire and blistering heat being little to worry about in comparison to the amazing finds, experiences and friendships that are being

formed.

I am loving the interactions with some of the biggest names in egyptian archaeology, sitting around a table eating dinner, talking to people that I have idolised in my academic career. The hard work and exhaustion is a pay-off id do any day to experience the beauty of this place, and the incredible nature of what we are finding.

tl;dr: be fucking jelous.

Fashion in the field. 

Sunrises here are purty :3

Day 6: Excitement is in the air

Right from the start today was anything but ordinary. The long list of difficulties started at 6.00am as we sped down the Fayum highway.

Earlier that morning one of the workmen had lashed our tripod and chilly-bin to the roof... our suspicions were slightly aroused when we noticed only half the string had been used. but hey. we trusted him.

This trust was shortlived.

Some 10minutes into our journey we spot several of our chocolate-wafer bars flying out behind our land rover and into the traffic behind us... like some kind of highway lolly-scramble...

We panicked.

Those chocolate bars are like life-elixir in the desert. So we very, very, very rapidly stopped and pulled over to rescue our beloved lunch-items.

Rescuing our tripod and lunch-box on the side of the Fayum highway at 6.00am

Fortunatley the losses were not too great (we wouldnt have to scrifice one of our crew for food today) and thus we carried on to our desert location. Thinking that the excitement for the day was at a close.

Oh how we were wrong.

We arrive to our transect number and the entrance way is blocked by a drainage canal on two sides, and a huge dune of sand through the middle channel. This was not pleasing to Dr. Evil and so he floored it to make it over the dune.

We soon came to a grinding halt.

Literally... Grinding...

After flailing out of the truck and reversing it off the dune we isolated the cause of this noise... 

It transpired that we had done some field surgery to the exhaust, bending and snapping it off by the wheel arch. 

Oops.

Hastily the boys leapt beneath the car and sawed off the ofending items.

awwwww snap!

The broken exhaust

Marcus posing magestically with the broken exhaust

Rach cradling it like her baby... dont ask... i dont know why either...

The rest of the day passed smoothly with me and Tash running the differential GPS, making out and 4 transects and then following Marcus on his field survey (WOAH PRETTY SHELLS AND STUFF). 

The peace and quiet of work was quickly shattered around 1.30 pm by the sound of artillery shells.... close... nothing makes you work fast quite like the sound of artillary... except for the guy who pulled up with a shotgun... So the story here goes that me and Tash were marking out our transects and a big white car rolled up beside us, shotgun poking out the window. The guy calls out various greetings, waved excitedly and drove off... Tash and me didnt breathe until he was over the horizon...

The exciting archaeological stuff for the day was in the form of our first high density transect. Huge numbers of neolithic pot shards, bone fragments, cores and flakes scattered across the transect area. Some of the flakes had significant re-touching and represented manufactured tools. 

Pretty snazzy stuff.

By the end of the day the total station crew were run off their feet and the analysis team stepped in to get the rest of the transect processed by close-time. 

We will all sleep well tonight :P

Sunrise is pretty cool out here :3

Every nail represents an artifact, pottery or bone!!!!

Rach working the total station, shooting in pot sherds

A grinding stone on the exterior of our transect!