Archaeology Calendar

July 22, 2013

It has become a joke on site that we will create a calendar of archaeologists in strange positions, as one is often bent, contorted, and crammed into strange spaces and asked to remove dirt from places that can barely be reached with one’s hands, let alone a large brush and dust bin.  Today as I lay on my stomach, facing the dirt, trying to remove a metal nail from a “wall” I kept thinking about which month I would be in the archaeological calendar.  Laying face first on the dirt isn’t even the strangest position I’ve seen this summer.  What was even stranger than my position was the fact that no one was particularly thrown by it.  My new friends and I have all been forced to develop new poses, often quite uncomfortable ones, in order to remove dirt from oddly shaped spaces.  Though the most common position is “bent over with ass in air,” leaning over a rock with your head near the dirt and your legs in the air is also quite common.  Thus I have begun a quest to take photos of the weird positions we are forced into in order to create this ridiculous calendar of awkward archaeological positions.  With only a few days left of digging it will be a challenge, but given the fact that we are all now at cultural levels, i.e. in strangely shaped rooms that can barely fit one person, I think the challenge will not be so challenging. 

Ahh, sigh, last week of excavation :(.