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!).
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 