We were able to run a pair of C14 dates on materials from Deering as part of the WALRUS project. I just got the results back today. I have to share the calibrated dates with the folks in Deering first. They were kind enough to let me include the samples, which were found during the monitoring work we did there late last summer, in the WALRUS studies.
They were found together in a fairly thin organic layer (likely midden) in the wall of one of the trenches. Very little walrus has been found there, so we were lucky.
Samples were from the upper dark layer visible in the trench wall.
I’ve been working on dating the various samples from the WALRUS project. Since walruses are marine mammals, direct C14 dating is problematic. In fact, that is one of the things we are looking at with the project. We ran a number of sample pairs of walrus and terrestrial material and compared the offsets. The bad news, there is not just one offset.
That meant that we couldn’t just use that to correct walrus dates. So, we are reliant on construction of chronologies using the caribou dates we have run, as well as other available dates, to figure out how old the walrus samples are. This is simple when we have a terrestrial sample from the same context. When we don’t we need to see if we have dates from earlier and/or later levels (both is better) which gives us boundaries for the context we are trying to date. To do that, we need to understand how the layers were arranged. I’ve been using
For some sites, we have very little information beyond the mound or midden square from which the samples came, or the depth of the arbitrary level they were excavated from. For others, we have more detailed stratigraphic information. I’ve been developing schematic descriptions of stratigraphy for the sites from which we have samples , using the Harris Matrix as a means of representation. Some of these are relatively easy to do and others are more complex. For simplicity’s sake I have only been including sampled contexts in the Harris matrices, although someday I can add other excavated units. The one on the left below is from a site where we have little information on most mounds (we have samples from six), and those we do have info on were apparently dug in arbitrary levels, as far as can be told from the field notes. The one on the right shows the two sampled mounds from a site where I have extremely detailed provenience information.
These help me check that the dates we have are consistent with the stratigraphy, and are helpful in construction of more complex dating models in OxCal. The process helps me think about how the models should be built, and also serves as a bit of a check, since having a crude model with some dates makes it easier to spot cases where a complex model may have been specified incorrectly (and therefore is giving incorrect results).
The trip to the conferences went well. I really didn’t have much time at SAAs to even see friends, if they weren’t in one of the sessions I was involved in. Then it was off to Prague for a session at Arctic Science Summit Week. It was a great session, although we were put into a tiny room, which the participants in the session nearly filled, so a lot of non-archaeologists wound up peeking in and moving on. Peter Jordan who got me involved in the session, and Sean Desjardins, are guest editors for a special issue of Quaternary International which will publish papers from this and a previous session. I seem to have promised them two!
I didn’t have very long in Prague, but did get a chance to catch up with Vica Lozinschi, a former BASC intern who helped with some salvage at Nuvuk. She is married and living in Prague now. We only had a morning, but she took me to see some of the sights (some literally “see” from afar since I had a lunch meeting afterwards!).
One of Prague’s many bridgesStreet performer in PragueStreet food in PragueVica sampling an adult beverage which the Czech people claim to have invented.Me also sampling said adult beverage. My grandfather owned a brewery, so it is of more than passing interest.
Once I got back from Prague I have been writing proposal language, and papers almost non-stop. For some reason, most of the handbook/encyclopedia type volumes I have contributions in are doing new editions this year, which means the articles have to be revised and updated. Several other articles have reached the proofs stage and need to be gone through.
Then there is a dissertation committee I am on. That meant I spent last weekend reading the dissertation, and am now trying to find a time when the entire committee can meet (several of us on Skype) to discuss. I am also working on final radiocarbon calibration and modeling for the WALRUS project, with a deadline due to one of the students having a presentation at the end of the month in which he wants to use my results. There were a few problems with the master database, now resolved. I’ve got all the dates calibrated, haveHarris Matrices built for all but two of the sites, and am using them to check my radiocarbon modeling against. I’ve spent all day today and will spend part of tomorrow on a site with a big wiggle in the calibration curve that pretty much seems to fall right at the period of occupation, so that’s annoying.
I’m also trying to pull the Walakpa salvage project together. This is a site with a deep history that was used up until very recently, and is still visited regularly by folks from Utqiaġvik. It would be a real shame if the structures we found last year just eroded, and at the rate things are going, normal funding channels simply are not fast enough.
This has all kept me pretty busy, and last week I had dental surgery. I was supposed to get an implanted post that a crown would go on after it healed, but apparently my bone hadn’t grown into the socket in a way to suit the dentist. So he routed a bunch of it out (hate that crunching sound in your head) and did a bone graft, so now I have to wait four months and maybe then get the implant. Sigh.
Out of Ice and Time 