I´m a bit behind..

I´m pretty behind in typing up my blogs. Here are 3 days after Lisbon. I´ll try to get caught up and post the rest by the end of the week.

Things have been different since our Lisbon trip because of the addition of new crew members. The group splits for the day now. Mike, the other Mike (Daniels) and Tom go out on their own most of the time while the rest of the students and I work with Jonathan and Caroline.

Day 17
We went back to the beach site from 5/29 and 6/1 and worked there the whole day. The site is called Vale do Pardo (val, like the girl’s nickname, par, like in golf, do). We began digging the largest test excavation we have attempted yet. It looked like a giant staircase, very wide but with only 3 steps. Each stair was around 6 meters long and about a meter deep each (the depths weren’t all even). It took us until after lunch to dig out the area. We were mainly using two Portuguese tools called enxadas (en-cha-das) that are comparable to an American hoe. They’re what Mike always uses to hack into his soil cuts and dunes. We use them to dig large pits.
Once we finished digging the area to test we had to map it. We did this on the lowest level putting stakes in the ground to mark smaller rows to dig out and sift looking for tools. Our rows were labeled L, M, N, and O. The rows were marked by string tied to the stakes. Within each row was a square labeled with a number, 9-12. The squares were marked off by pink birthday candle holders. Cute, right? Each square was 1x1 meter. We spent the rest of the afternoon digging and sifting the L row until we brought it to ground level. I was working with Erin. Between everyone we only found two flakes, but for good reason. The area we were sifting was mostly just what we had pulled away from higher in the dune. We ended the day just after 5 pm. We were all feeling a little beat up… digging out a whole section of dune was a big job that took a lot of effort.

Day 18
We started work late because Jonathan and Caroline had to pick Jennifer up from the airport. She is another Louisville student coming to work with us. We went to their apartment at 11 am but they did not arrive for a while afterwards because Jennifer’s flight was late. We ate lunch there and left to return to Vale Pardo around 1 pm.

We did the same thing we were doing the afternoon before, digging and sifting further into the large test pit. I found one really crappy quartzite flake while sifting. Jonathan’s strong reaction to bad flakes was something that was hard for me to deal with at first (he has no problem saying “That’s crap!” and throwing things over his shoulder), but I laughed at his reaction to the quartzite flake I found today. “Eww, but bag it.” I was pretty confident it was something he and Caroline would be interested in but it was not exactly what we were looking for. It might seem complicated so I’ll explain. The flake I found was quartzite, not chert, which is important but not as valued as chert. Also, the flake I found was very badly weathered. It had been wind and sand blasted creating a lot of little dents that make it hard to analyze. Since it was weathered it indicates that it came from somewhere else – which means it was probably not a flake created by someone at Vale Pardo. It’s amazing how much you can tell from a little stone..
We stopped excavating close to 6 pm. We still had a bit left to do there which brings me to the next day.

Day 19
We returned again to Vale Pardo to finish our large test excavation. We found a ton of charcoal but at this point I can’t remember if we found any more flakes. Charcoal is very important to the research. A piece of charcoal slightly smaller than a pea is enough to tell what was burned in it after it is analyzed. This basically means the plants burned in the fire can be determined through that tiny amount of charcoal once it is broken in half. If it can be dated to the time period we are researching it will be a major find for one important portion of the research – reconstructing the Paleolithic landscape. The only downfall is that it could just be a bush or something random that burned much more recently than what we are looking for. Charcoal dating can take up to a year depending on where it is sent so they won’t know for sure for a while.
Our test unit finished off our digging for us as our back wall started to collapse in on itself and we had to give up. When the fall first started collapsing we just scooped up the collapse and sifted it. At some point during that effort digging was no longer possible because the wall would not cooperate. At the end of it we had dug out rows M, N, and O. Vale Pardo is a significant site because through our efforts and years past they have found several diagnostics there and have excavated it thoroughly. That site is now wrapped up for this season.

That´s all for now. Little cliff hanger for the next blog: over the past couple days we found something VERY exciting, a feature that makes the site the most important site found yet in their research. Bet you all cannot wait to find out :)