Fresh Perspectives
Every day I promise myself I will write a proper post about the food here, but every day something else really interesting happens which I end up writing about instead. So today, I am determined to start with the food. My favourite snacks are the green mandarins. I think I'm going to look like a mandarin based on the amount of these I've been eating. I just can't get enough of them, and I loved trying the fresh sugar cane, straight from the field. Our host Cleo also currently has cocoa beans drying in the sun, and I'm really hoping she will let me try raw chocolate.
We eat our main meal at lunch time, this is because we start working on the site at 0700 and by midday we are all ravenous! Wayne and Trina prepare fresh local produce in traditional Grenadian dishes and their food is amazing! It's so vibrant and tasty. Yesterday we were given 'Oil Down', this is the National Dish of Grenada (check out the recipe here). Our Grenadian students explained that it is called 'Oil Down' because the whole dish is cooked in coconut milk, which is naturally quite oily. The dish is simmered until the coconut milk has reduced right down, hence, oil - down. We've had fish soup, where the local fish is caught fresh that morning, and I've even tried 'Mannish Water' which is a type of offal stew. I feel very privileged that people here are so welcoming, friendly, and willing to offer me so many new experiences.
But, back to the archaeology...
We've all heard the phrase "you can't see the wood for the trees". Sometimes working on an archaeological site can be like that, you get so focused on a particular area, that you lose sight of what the bigger picture is. Today was a little like that. We split into three teams: Noortje, Mia, and Marsha were cataloguing ceramic finds; Bert, Akima, Meno and myself continued working on the foreshore site; the rest of the group started work on the main site. Akima and I were continuing to excavate to try and uncover the extent of a charcoal layer that was discovered earlier in the week. But when you have a dark clay layer on top of a burnt clay layer on top of charcoal layer, all of which is rapidly drying in the heat, with the sun shining directly on the area you are trying to work in, it can be a little hard to see what you are doing. By midday, you're tired, hungry, and starting to go cross-eyed. This is when mistakes can be made. At this point, it's worth taking a break. After 10 mins of walking along the beach, feeling the breeze from the sea on your face, and of course eating more mandarins, you feel that little bit more refreshed. It's then that your vision clears and you see the section with fresh eyes. It's also nice when other team members come to visit and ask what you've found. It gives you a chance to voice your thoughts and ideas about the interpretation of the site. Group discussions are a great way to get fresh perspectives on your project. Today, the perseverance paid off, and we found a piece of burnt wood resting on the charcoal layer.
Next job will be to sit down with the dig directors (Corinne and Meno) and to discuss what we think the different layers represent, and what we think the sequence of events was in terms of the site creation. For example, did a structure burn down, and then at a later date, the land slipped. Or, was there a series of land slides? What happened to the people? We have ceramic fragments and animal bones, what do these represent? And how does this foreshore site relate (if it at all) to the main site?
p.s. I'm really proud of myself because I had this little guy running across my hand today, although Bert now thinks that my high-pitched "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, eeep!" will make an excellent ring tone...