Tag: equipment

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.

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

Looking for scrap lumber

We’re in need of a bit of scrap lumber (1x2s and 2x4s), to complete construction of a water screening device.  Alas, Barrow no longer has a lumberyard, so it is a real problem when it turns out you need a bit more lumber.  If anyone has some excess lumber they would be willing to contribute to the Walakpa salvage effort, please let me know.

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.

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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.

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Sean looking down the beach.

 

 

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.

Hints for those thinking of getting into archaeology–Pt 1

For some reason, two of the archaeology blogs I follow had recent posts which were perfect summaries of information for people considering getting into archaeology.  Although the topics were quite different, neither was the sort of thing covered in most classes or textbooks.

On the practical side, GraecoMuse did a nice summation of what an archaeologist needs in the way of personal field equipment.  I’d add a clipboard desk for forms, and certainly most US and Canadian archaeologists would substitute Marshalltown trowels for WHS.

On the other end of the spectrum, what appears to be a new blog gives an extended quote from an L. S. Klijn article in Acta Archaeologica listing 25 Commandments for archaeological researchers. I tend to think that not all archaeologists are quite as individualistic and cutthroat as #5 might imply, and would offer such highly successful collaboratives as NABO and GHEA as counterexamples. The list is a clear description of some very important principles of archaeological logic and epistemology.  Many of the “commandments” are applicable to all scientific endeavor, no matter the discipline.

 

Trading Skins & Oil

I’ve been working on talks for the session on the Connected Arctic at next week’s Alaska Anthropological Association meeting in Seattle. My family was in Juneau lobbying, so I had some free time.  I’m almost done with the one about the trade networks  which moved large quantities of oil, blubber & baleen from the coast to be exchanged for caribou & sheep products from the interior.  By volume, this greatly exceeded  the amount of metal, jade and similar items that also moved through these networks.  For some reason, the skin & oil trade has received less attention from archaeologists, although it has been documented ethnographically.  In fact, it seems to have been a necessity for sustained interior occupation.  I’ve been trying to make a good visual presentation, which takes a bit of doing.  I think it should be done tomorrow.

I would have been done earlier if I hadn’t had to spend some time on sorting out some safety issues. The local phone company is installing a microwave link to carry  internet for science, and the best spot is on the BARC, apparently on the tower where the radar is.  For some reason, they didn’t think the FOUR signs on the locked door to the tower warning of possible radiation hazards and giving the numbers to contact someone who could  make sure the radar was disabled before they went up on the tower meant THEM.  The locked gate at the bottom of the tower deck stairway didn’t faze them either.  Fortunately the radar was off, so no one got hurt.  However, the radar can be activated remotely, so going up on the tower, even if you think you saw the radar was off when you went by the controls, is a really STUPID idea.  Since they presumably will need to go up there again to finish the setup and for periodic maintenance, it was necessary to impress on them (management, not just the crew) that they need to call and get an OK every time.  The excuse was that they’d talked to the building owner (who I’m sure approved putting stuff up there in concept, but never told them it was OK to ignore warning signs while doing it!)  If people would just read and think….

Packing for the field again

Since we now are ready to salvage the Ipiutak structure, Laura & I were going to pack up a small amount of field gear yesterday.  However, Laura got caught manning a table for Friends of Tuzzy Library, and since she was there when everything was put away, we decided to do it this morning before she caught the plane out for a doctor’s appointment.  So bright and early she picked me up in Daisy II (my old truck, which I think needs a muffler) and we headed over.  All in all it took less than an hour, and we’re all ready for tomorrow.

Gravel moving accomplished, & then football

Friday we got the gravel moved.  If you remember, the site looked like this:

Gravel pile on the Ipiutak structure

Not exactly conducive to a quick recovery excavation, especially since it’s mostly going to be volunteer labor, the students being back at school and all.  It had been looking pretty grim on the heavy equipment front, but Ilisaġvik College came through with a reasonable rental on their new Case loader, and Walter Brower & I headed out around 9AM.

Getting there took a while, but shortly after 10 we were at work.  The loader has extra wide tires, and reputedly is not very good in snow, but it did fine in the gravel.

Starting work

 

Backdragging.

Backdragging proved effective and minimized the need to drive on top of the feature.  We were able to take it down to less than 1 foot above the surface, so it will be a lot less work this week & next weekend.

Finishing touches.
Walter checking the results.
Final result--a great improvement.

All in all, a great improvement.

The next day Barrow played Nikiski in football. Both schools are in the Greatland Conference, and Nikiski is a perennial football powerhouse.  Barrow had never beaten them.

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Football beside the Arctic Ocean. Whalers #24 (in motion to the left of the frame) is Trace Hudson, who works on the Nuvuk Project when he's not playing football.

Barrow fixed that.

Final score. No, I have no idea why there is 3:24 on the clock; the game was over.