Today started well. Very very well. 4 transects down before 3pm, field walking done, analysis done. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly.
Till we got back for download.
Then all hell loose.
Just prior to lunch the theodolite had a little hiccup and BSOD'd. We started the ol' girl back up and continued with survey (finding several pieces of neolithic pot and some fine paleolithic flakes). Nothing seemed to be out of place until download. Where it was revealed that the BSOD had caused a file corruption for the entire transect, meaning all the polygons were left open, and all point data was attributeless :S.
Several hours of pondering later, and several handfulls of hair stressfully pulled out it was finally assessed that the whole thing was fucked. 3 hours of work de_stroyed. My soul de_stroyed. we tried our hardest to keep morale up but all 9 of us were absolutley despondant. We would have to reshoot tomorow. ffffffffffffffffffff. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. well. shit.
But the fun didnt stop here. The Differential GPS unit stored several of the points as areas. not good. fuck compewtars. alsdkjglsakhgashfl;kajdlkfajdlkcmascma.dfj. after afew minutes we managed to work some magic and re-configure all the points (holy shit crisis averted).
Morale was still low at the begining of BBQ PARTAY NIGHT but an open bar and delicious food soon fixed that. Tonight we celebrated Dr. Rebecca passing her pHD :3 WOOOOOOOO, a excellent costume of a stethescope, syringe (some kind of animal syringe, dont question it, just roll with it), and harry potter glasses was provided for Bex, and the party began in earnest. Free beer. Good conversations. and a good pick up after the download traumas. For the first time tonight we stayed up past 9pm (no nanna pants allowed when theres free beer around).
Haman (our resident crazy driver, BBQ maestro and all around egyptian comedian) cooked a magnificent BBQ for us this eve :3 kofta and falafel and deliciousness EVERYWHERE (except for sammy, but thats a story for tomorow)
The rest of the night was dedicated to the welcoming of our new crew member Marshall, who was soon dubbed "The hot guy" by slaggy and Rach. This will subsequently be his radio call sign for the field. The story here is that archaeologists are not usually renowned for their looks... at all... its a good thing that we usually hide behind baggy kaki clothing and stetson hats which cover our faces... so the story goes that when Marshall first arrived at the dig house tash exclaims: WHO ARE YOU!??? YOU CANT WORK WITH US???!!!! YOU ARE TOO HOT!!!!! Which tbh was fatally embarassing for everyone involved, on the flipside the girls are pretty excited to work with him for the next 5 weeks. However the nights embarasing remarks by certain individuals will not be forgotten anytime soon.
The surface of the area we are working on... desert pavement...
SHORT ARCHAEOLOGY LESSON:
way back when this used to be a paleo-lake (was all under water...) and then over time as it dried out we get this kind of a surface, which then several millions of years later peeps walked over (10,000bp) and dropped flakes nd shit which we now look at :3
Spot the artifacts in the picture... anyone who finds them gets a gold star
The dig house!!!
Us at work in the field!
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