Yesterday the weather was very nice, our first real summer day, just in time for a site visit by a number of Barrow Elders with family ties to Nuvuk. A fine time was had by all.
Today the weather started out even better, if possible. It was sunny, with blue sky and blue ocean, and so little wind that we actually had mosquitos. We finished one of the two burials we were working on around lunch, just as it started to cloud up. The other burial was done around 3 pm, and we started shooting in and backfilling STPs. Both burials were quite interesting,and both had harpoon heads as grave goods, which we haven’t had since the first burial.
Laura and the students went in early, since there really wasn’t enough for everyone to do, and Laura had to catch a plane to California for her sister-in-law’s wedding this weekend. Dennis, Jenny, Ron, Richard the bear guard and I stayed out to finish. We had a slight delay due to transit battery issues, and a dry fine mist rolled in. We managed to shoot in everything, including some delicate surface artifacts from portions of the site we haven’t reached yet, which are being collected to avoid damage from traffic. Ron and Richard even backfilled a lot of the remaining STPs! The students are very lucky…
Tomorrow we’ll have part of the crew in the lab, and the rest will go out to finish backfilling and haul gear back to the road, where they will meet Jenny in the project truck, who will haul the gear back to the lab for cleaning and storage. It’s very satisfying (and quite a relief) to actually have accomplished what I wanted & have all the data collected a day AHEAD!!
Out of Ice and Time 