Cleaning things

Archaeology is, in some respects, a dirty business. We excavate things out of the dirt, and, in the process, we can get pretty dirty ourselves. If we are camping, showers and laundry are rare events. Walakpa is pretty sandy, so …

This past week, the remaining crew have been working to get equipment cleaned & stored. We dried several tents, dried and hung up jackets, dried and got the sand off a lot of equipment, and sorted the remaining food. We were going to donate it to the common pool, but there were already 8 bottles of mustard in the refrigerator, so we’ll store that for next year.

I’ve been working on both project equipment and my personal gear. My dishwasher is full of coffeepots & plates, which will get stored for the winter. I’ve washed the tent and blanket Garrett Knudsen was kind enough to leave, which was used by several other crew members, and will be mailing it on Monday, along with a few souvenirs that crew members didn’t manage to pack. I’ve also washed a pile of assorted gloves. I’ve still got a UICS sleeping bag to wash and dry, and some down jackets to drop off at the dry cleaner.

I have been washing field clothes since I got home. I spent the weekend washing and drying two sleeping bags (one that I used, and a spare that one of the crew members used, cleaning and packing two Thermarests (ditto), and washing and renewing the waterproofing on my tent & fly. I’ve still got to rewash the chairs I loaned the project. The crew power washed the crushed mosquitos off them, but they wound up muddy, so I’ve got to wash them again.

Putting gear away until the next time I head for the field.

Back from the field

We got into town late last Thursday. The field season went pretty well, after a slow start due to ice preventing us from getting out. We lost a few days to major storms, but we had a great crew and accomplished a lot.

Breaking camp was a bit of a challenge, since we were down to seven people in the field. The big boat was scheduled to arrive at 9AM, so we broke everything down the day before except for the mess tent and the latrine, plus our sleeping tents. Then we got up at 6 AM and took down all the sleeping tents, and started ferrying gear to the beach with the ATV & trailer.

It turned out the boat ramp wasn’t in the water back in town, so the boat didn’t make it until nearly 1PM, after having to launch into Elson Lagoon and go around Point Barrow. It was a cold morning, and once we had stuff packed, it was hard to stay warm, especially since we’d dressed for hard work and packed up everything else. At one point, several of the crew were napping in a ditch.

The boat had to make two trips, so we sent 3 people up with the first load, and then 3 more with the second. I drove the ATV & Tubby back to town, so I was the last one in. I left before the boat, but Doctor Island is pretty fast, and I was riding into a north wind and kept meeting people and stopping to chat, so they beat me home.

GRA_5861 — Loading the boat. Photo courtesy of Zac Peterson.

GRA_5878 — Heading home. Photo courtesy of Zac Peterson.

Our first day back was the last day of the UIC Science Fair, and the archaeology lab was featured tour. Also I had a presentation scheduled. Everyone was really tired, but we managed to pull things together for a good tour, and in fact had visitors well past the scheduled end of tours. The presentation was well attended.

As I write this, another early storm with winds from the West is brewing, with predictions of coastal erosion.

All ready

Almost the entire crew has made it out to the site. Some of them went down in the morning and set up a lot of things. Half of them came back and took some more people and gear down, and should be heading back soon.

Meanwhile back in town Katrina Watson got the electronics packed up and into the yellow shed, while I got both lab computers back on the network, connected them to the project dropbox and put all the necessary files on them. I reviewed the workflow with Katrina, who will be cycling in and of town, since she’s from here and her family and kids are here for the summer. That means she can provide a bit of continuity for the lab.

I’m going down in the morning. Since the wind is supposed to stay east for a few days, we hope a boat can go down on Monday and bring most of the rest of the heavy stuff (chairs, wood for tables) and more delicate things (cameras, computers, transit) down.

The crew asked for some board games. I posted on Facebook to see if anyone in town had any they weren’t using anymore, and in about 2 minutes, Doe Doe Edwardsen said she had 5 we could use. She even had them delivered! Quyanaqpak Edwardsen family!

One of our international volunteers is coming a bit later. She is currently working somewhere without internet, so she’s been communicating as she can. When I got her itinerary, it became clear she’s going to have to overnight in Anchorage both ways. Back to Facebook, and within a few minutes archaeologist friends Monty Rogers and Katie Meyers had offered to put her up.

Most of the archaeology crew are volunteers, and others are putting in a lot of volunteer time on top of what is paid. Not everyone can take time and go into the field. But we can’t do it without help, and the people like Doe Doe and Monte chipping in make this salvage possible. The true Alaska spirit. We appreciate every bit of help.

Trying to get into the field

We have been getting gear ready for days. The next challenge is to get it (and ourselves) to the field. The weather and equipment have not been cooperating. The shore fast ice is just really melting this week, so we hadn’t been able to take anything down before. Then the wind changed to the west, leading to one helicopter-assisted rescue in front of my house and ice against the shore. We staged gear in the “yellow shed” (a small warehouse shared by archaeology and the ARM program) and we waited. Yesterday, the wind went east for a bit and pushed the ice off the beach, so we rushed to load the UIC Science boat Crescent Island and sent heavy, durable & waterproof things down to the site. Four of the crew went along and they and the two UICS logistics staff who were running the boat put the stuff in a secure spot and headed home just as the wind changed back. They made it before the ice came back in.

*Crescent Island* loaded up at NARL. The John Deere is just for moving her and a sister boat, and is the only tractor in town.

*Crescent Island* under way on her first working trip for UIC Science.

Today, the wind wasn’t as strong as predicted, so Kaare and a bunch of the crew were going to head down with a little more gear, set up tents, and Ben Fitzhugh, Garrett Knudsen, Zac Peterson & Katie Daniels were going to stay and start stripping sod. We packed up after lunch, but various ATVs decided to not behave (one only wanted to run well in reverse) so it took a while.

Kaare loading the trailer while Zac looks on.

Garrett and Katie getting ready to bring up the rear (and pick up anything that falls off).

By the time they got to Nunavak it was pretty late, and the stream was still really deep to cross, but it was draining, so they came home and will try again tomorrow. We may try to do two trips to get more folks down, but there will be one more boat trip Sunday or Monday, so some folks will go down that way.

Meanwhile, I had discovered that the newly-returned batteries for the transit were really not in as good shape as the tests at the surveying equipment shop indicated. I spent some time chasing down replacement batteries. In the end, GPS Alaska had a charger for the new batteries in stock, could order me new batteries, and had two that they use which they are renting to us at a very low price until our come in and get shipped to us. My boss is in Anchorage and going to fly his plane up, so he was able to pick them up and bring them along. All the other stuff is in decent shape, so we should be able to work and record what we are doing.

Packing my own gear

Things have been so busy with getting gear for the project ready and a couple of contract projects that I really haven’t had time to get my own stuff packed. I had ordered everything that I can’t get here it Utqiaġvik, but actual packing, not so much. The weather had been beautiful.

We went to the parade, which was quite long, with the usual fire apparatus, SAR, and local businesses, as well as a just married couple, and an entire fleet of cabs.

KBRW truck. They managed to broadcast the parade from the truck while in the parade.

I was going to take the whole day off and go to the games, but it kept raining, they moved the contests to Ipalook, and there weren’t nearly as many food booths as usual.

So I decided to pack. My husband, who also has a PhD in anthropology and did field archaeology for many years (he now manages the Community Health Aid program for the North Slope Borough) was available to help, so that was a bonus! We managed to get almost everything, except what I am still using, into two dry bags, a duffle bag and my day pack. That includes all my personal gear (including tent and a very plush sleeping pad due to my twice-fused spine) plus some personally owned electronics we’ll be using, and a couple of extra things in case someone’s gear isn’t quite up to snuff.

Sorting things

Two more crew members are here, and we’ve been doing lots of sorting. Sorting field equipment, sorting some samples from last year, sorting food. We’ve got one or two more days of sorting and putting away samples, and then we can focus on packing field gear.

Katrina and Heather leaning up after the first round of sorting.

Adriana and Heather getting the fine excavation kits straightened out.

Katie looking for something in the database.

Kaare is shopping for the project in Anchorage, but he can’t make it up until after the 4th of July, which is probably about when the freight will get here, so we may be rushing around cooking after that.

#Arctic #Arctic #climate_heritage

People are arriving!

The first of the crew members have arrived. The field school starts tomorrow morning. We’re spending the first week in town so we can go over some things inside where it is warm not windy, and the students can experience Nalukataq and the 4th of July games. As it turns out, one of them is from Barrow, so it’s not a new experience, but she’ll get to hang out with her family and do field school, so that’s a good thing.

The other part of this is that I think it is important for students to understand what goes into the logistics of a project, so they will get to help with and learn about that aspect of archaeology. Better than trying to learn on the fly when they are in charge, like some of my friends have had to do!

I spent the day getting the field forms updated and finalized, so we can start printing them on waterproof paper tomorrow. Now to update the lab forms and get the workflow established so we can hand off between crew members as they come and go. Several of them are returners, so they know the routine, but it is always a good thing to have documented.

Level_unit form 2017

I added the bit about not writing on the back of the form after having to flip dozens of forms over to scan both sides. Not a good use of time.

Checking things off the list

It’s been a busy week getting ready for the field, while still keeping up with the usual flow of work. Kaare Erickson was up, and went through the field gear. We went over our lists and are in pretty good shape, although we are going to replace the pump for the water screen since the one we have was anything but trouble free. Kaare went back to Anchorage with a decent shopping list for food & camp supplies, which he’ll bring/send up next week.

The logistics guys started making sure the tents are all located & in good order. One of them might try and head down toward Walakpa over the weekend to see how the travel is. Several days ago someone who travels down that way a lot made it all the way down on an ATV, but the trail wasn’t good and the beach wasn’t clear the whole way. Plus the streams were hight since there was a west wind. It changed this afternoon, and the ice has started really breaking out down at Wainwright and maybe in front of town here too, so maybe the beach or even the ocean will be viable soon. If not, we have requested assistance with transport from NSB Search and Rescue. I know they get a lot of requests, and of course emergencies take priority, but maybe they’ll be able to help us out. Fingers crossed we can get down there somehow without a lot of trouble.

I’ve ordered all my personal supplies and am just hoping they get here before we head to the field. They are on the way, but the post office is woefully understaffed and seems to be taking days to get non-first class mail and package slips into the boxes. Not their fault; they work hard, but there aren’t enough workers to get things done in a timely fashion.

Getting ready for Walakpa, round 4

We are getting ready for another season at Walakpa, in which we hope to find out more about the house connected to the tunnel we found, and if it is connected to the two house visible in the erosion face, as well as the house that turned out to be beside the monument that got moved. I’ve been scanning field notes, writing proposals, coordinating travel schedules, replacing camera lenses, rounding up tents, and trying to get a fund set up to accept donations.

We’ve got a volunteer crew lined up, including several folks from last year, including Ben Fitzhugh, Caelie Butler, Glenys Ong Echavarri and Becky DeAngelo. We’re going to be joined for a short while by several other archaeologists and students from Barrow, elsewhere in Alaska, the Lower 48, France and possibly Poland. There is also a small field school run through University of Alaska Fairbanks (which still has room for a couple more people–if you have tried to register & failed, contact me–there was apparently a computer glitch that was blocking people for a while), and some folks who are volunteering in other ways. One of my co-workers can’t get away to go into the field, since summer is the busy season, but is scanning all of last year’s field notebooks.

Getting to the field may be a challenge. The ocean is still ice-covered, and there is still snow and ice on the beach. We just had a pouring rainstorm, with thunder & lightning, so the land trail is probably now really awful.

Trying to catch up

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!).

Vica 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.

Back in town

We made it back into town just over two weeks ago. The field season went well, despite a few challenges from sea ice, snow drifts on the beach and general cold weather. There was a huge amount of catching up to do (nearly 4000 emails), three projects which needed various forms filed, an MOA which had to be done for this project, some radiocarbon calibrations to write up for another project, lots of equipment which needed to be cleaned, dried, put away or returned, and many artifacts and samples which needed processing. Although I had lots of help, I’ve been working 16 hour days since before we went into the field, and something had to give.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have good connectivity in the field, so the only updates I could send were from my deLorme InReach. At 160 characters per message, it really isn’t up to blog posts. That means I’m sort of going to have to do some catch-up posts. I head to Deering for a monitoring project on Saturday, and it’s not clear how good the connectivity will be there either, so there may be another gap.

And we’re off!

The wind changed, we can boat down, and so we’re going! More when we can or when we get back.

Getting closer

Time is flying before the field season. It has been insanely busy trying to get some projects to a point that they can be left for a few weeks while we’re in the field, while at the same time getting set to actually go to the field. We have been ordering things, and waiting for them to get here so we can build things, or pack things or prep meals or… And of course, this being the Arctic, shipping delays abound. However, we have gotten the replacement cover for a Weatherport, all the recalled transit batteries, extra new batteries for the handheld radios, Rite in the Rain paper for field forms, the refurbished iPads, the nice new big First Aid kits, chaining pins, Sharpies (lots of Sharpies) and a bunch of other goodies. I got my new tent stuff sack (the original lasted one trip, and all the duct tape in the world isn’t enough to hold what’s left together if I actually put the tent in it) and my InReach. We are still waiting on the parts for a water screening station, and the dry goods.

The lab looks a mess, because everything is still out from the inventory, and needs to be packed, but some of the things to pack it in are part of the freight. Not optimal, but it will sort itself out.

The freeze and chill food got in, and Kaare will be working with the volunteers to prep a lot of meals to freeze before we head down. That is, once there are enough volunteers here.

The first of the volunteers were to get in Tuesday night, but the plane couldn’t land, so they all wound up heading back to Anchorage, getting in quite late. One got on the early flight today on standby, but the rest are now coming tomorrow morning. I figured maybe 2 nights in Anchorage would be a student budget-buster (having slept under some stairs once when stranded in England for a week on the way home from the field–Laker had raised ticket prices over the summer and I didn’t have a credit card), so I posted on a couple of northern archaeology Facebook groups, and had 5 offers of places to stay from folks in Anchorage within a couple of hours. In the end, folks couldn’t get refunds for the nights they paid for (a downside of online booking, I guess), but if anyone else gets stranded overnight on the way in or out, at least I’ve got a bunch of phone numbers and we should be able to help out. Gotta love Alaskan archaeologists.

Kaare made it to Walakpa, although there is still snow on the beach. There has been a good bit more slumping, but it looks like the overhanging block that was making access so dangerous has fallen, which is a good thing indeed. The plan is to try to take some of the heavy stuff down tomorrow, although that may change depending on if the freight makes it in.

We’ve also got a survey to finish before we go (only got the go-ahead a week ago) and maybe a desktop study as well, depending on their timeframe (just got the go-ahead today). Oh, and a proposal, which was just requested yesterday.

And I need to finish making sense of a bunch of dates which I have calibrated for the WALRUS project. It looks like we have decent ranges for many of the sites based on the caribou dates. There are a couple of sites that are confusing (possible reverse stratigraphy in big mounds) and I haven’t been able to get copies of the field notes or talk to the excavators yet. I’ve calibrated the walrus dates using the marine curve, and it is clear there is not a standard offset from the terrestrial dates. I’m redoing it using the best available local delta R, but I know the one for Barrow is off by several hundred years (if you use it there are a lot of bones from archaeological sites that it indicates will be dying in a couple of centuries!) and there is one site in the walrus study where one pair of dates on associated caribou and walrus is several hundred years farther apart that the other pair. Since walrus move around, some probably more than others, it may not make sense until we figure out where the individuals were feeding.

A hundred and one (roughly) moving pieces

There are a lot of things that go into a successful project. We’ve been inventorying field gear and project supplies, getting emergency contact forms filled out, finalizing safety protocols and on and on. Kaare Erickson is up from Anchorage for a week or so to help get the gear organized for the Walakpa season, plus another project we’re doing right after that. He’s heading back down next weekend and will do some serious shopping (& screen building) before he comes back up for the field season.

Today we decided to try to get down to Walakpa to see how the site was. Some folks have made it down (including someone in a truck, supposedly. Sean Gunnells, who worked at Walakpa in 2013 came along, and we headed down on ATVs. Alas, yesterday’s snow was not helpful, and the Honda kept bogging down, since it had less ground clearance than the Polarises. We kept having to go up on the tundra, which made for slow riding. We made it to Hollywood, which was probably about nine miles, or a little over halfway there, before we decided that the game wasn’t worth the candle. It would have taken all day, and we had lots of other things to get done. It’s supposed to be warm (in the 40s) for several days, so we hope that a lot of the snow will melt and make for easier traveling.

Beach just south of Hollywood. We got as far as the snow in the distance.

While we were on the beach, we looked for tracks. We didn’t see any, even near a couple of areas where animals had been butchered. All we saw was an old walrus carcass that must have been dragged up the beach by a bear, but no tracks around it.

However, we had packed lunches, so we went ahead and ate on the beach. A little ring seal popped up in the shore lead and looked at us.

Gear list posted

I just put up a new page with the gear list that I’m sending to the folks who are volunteering to help with the archaeological salvage at Walakpa this summer. I thought it might be interesting to people.

If you have experience camping up here and notice anything you think is missing, please drop me a line :-).

UPDATE 5/29/16: I added something to the list, thanks to a good suggestion from Randall O.

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