Just go with the flow

Every family has its ups and downs. When you're living, working, and socialising with the same people for an extended period of time, they do start to become like family. You can begin to identify the different characteristics within the group, for example, the parents (team members who just seem to want to take care of everyone), the siblings (always laughing, joking, and teasing each other), the children (having fun but occasionally needing to be reigned in a little). And, like any family unit, when living in close proximity for an extended period of time, tempers can begin to fray and "drama" is inevitable. On a project like this one, the response options are limited. You can't just walk away, you need to be able to continue living and working with these people. Do you confront the person you're having issues with and risk a huge argument? Or do you 'let it go' and hope the whole thing blows over? Ultimately, what is the best course of action for the benefit of the project? I've talked and highlighted a lot of the positive aspects of being in the field, but almost every excavation will experience some sort of internal "drama", and ours is no exception.

However, I have found that a brilliant cure for venting all your frustrations, without upsetting anyone, is to spend a morning acting as bucket monkey. Basically, you empty buckets of soil onto the spoil heap so that other people can keep digging. Another good alternative is shifting the spoil heap (although this is not something you really want to do unless you absolutely have to); or generally using a mattock to smash through the rock hard earth. I had a very therapeutic and enjoyable start to the day being a bucket monkey.

With frustrations successfully alleviated, I was sent off to film an interview with a local farmer who has an amazing collection of stone axes (which he kindly agreed to let me show on the blog). All of these artefacts were found on the land that he farms and in his interview he told us how important he thought it was for this cultural heritage to be recorded, studied, and preserved. (The speckled appearance of the artefacts in the pics is because of the rain).

During the interview we were shown around the fields and the spots where the items had been found were pointed out. It's amazing to see this material so well preserved. It's also incredibly difficult to walk uphill, over rough terrain, in flip-flops trying to film someone, and at one point I was stood in an anthill filming (the ants round here bite!). Ant issues aside, it was really great to hear someone being so genuine and passionate about their cultural heritage.

After this we visited a new site, where part of our team had been opening small 2 x 2 m trenches to look for Colonial period material. At the time we arrived on site, they had just discovered the corner of a building with a tiled floor. It was exciting watching features other than post holes emerge from the ground (I've seen several hundred post holes in the last few days). Tomorrow we have a big open day, which will (hopefully) be a lot of educational fun for our visitors. Oh, and my toy has finally arrived (and by toy I mean technical, scientific instrument) I promise to try not to bore you all silly with my obsession.