Halloween at the American Museum of Natural History

It was early in the morning on All Hallow's Eve and my fellow future archaeologist, Emily, and I were up to the usual in the Collections - going through all the South American Artifacts that no one had put on display or studied yet and hence were left to sit in darkness, unattended and uncared for for decades. Each cabinet was a new maze of cobwebs and dust - anything could be inside, from the ubiquitous pottery sherds, to intricately and cryptically craved stones, to the occasional mummy's belongings - including appendages.

On this particular morning the mystery of the collections and promise of the unknown was tangible. And the suspense did not disappoint. From the depths of the 3rd floor collection emerged that morning the most improbable artifact I could ever imagine. A 500+ year old Kool-Aid pitcher. Aaahhhhhhhh, what visionaries! See for yourself:

American Museum of Natural History

I've just begun a collections management internship in the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Myself and two other interns are cataloging artifacts in the South American artifact collections. Much of what we've seen this week is ceramic, although there have been some textiles, as well as bone tools. My favorites so far are the Peruvian whistling vessels, which are essentially two conjoined jugs, often in the form of humans or animals.

Archaeolink Prehistory Park

What a week! I can't believe I only left Chicago about 10 days ago. I'm volunteering - in exchange for a tent and board - at Archaeolink Prehistory Park. It's a half indoor/half outdoor museum about ancient Scotland, located in a small town called Oyne, way up in the northern part of the country in Aberdeenshire. The park has all sorts of exhibits, demonstrations, and reenactments, including story telling (Flick is an amazing story teller), ancient survival skill lessons - how to start a fire, make pottery coils, and cast metal - and a Halloween celebration culminating in the burning of a giant wickerman.


Since I arrived at Archaeolink, I've helped cast a bronze ax, held weaving demonstrations in the visitors center and the Iron Age hut, and, when asked about my accent, told visitors that the Celts kept Americans as pets (I hope no one belived me!).

The bronze ax casting was amazing. Mark has been doing casting demonstrations for years and said this was his best one yet. In the Bronze Age hut, he's build a ceramic furnace in the floor, with the bellows stoking the fire from underneath. To cast, he fills a ceramic crucible with bronze bits (that he's gotten from discarded piping). Once the charcoals are hot in the furnace he puts the crucible in and puts more charcoal on top of it. The bronze has to get very hot, so we kept it in the furnace for 45 minutes. I worked the bellows for most of it, but a visitor, who works as a welder, wanted a turn, so I was able to get some pictures.

Pouring the bronze was such a spectacle. After lining the mold with soot, so he could get the cast out once finished, Mark took long pincers and pulled the crucible out of the furnace. The clay was glowing red and the bronze gave off a green-ish flame. In the picture you can see the hot bronze just poured into the mold. He then put soot on the top, and after it cooled a bit, he turned the mold over and, voila, a bronze ax!

While the days here are action packed, the evening are rather. Since everyone else commutes to the park, I've been up to some solo exploring in the evenings.

I hiked to the top of Berry Hill, which I am camping at the base of. It indeed has raspberries growing all over it. From the top you can see the breathtaking landscape, including an old hill fort a few miles away. I found out that this is called Dunnydeer Hill and I plan to hike to the top soon to explore the ruins.

Dunnydeer Hill looms over the closest real town - Insch. It's three miles away, so I've taken the bus there a few times after work. Insch has a train station, an Indian restaurant, a general store, a post office and two pubs. The people I have met are really cool - if I stay at Archaeolink long enough, I should really think about staying in town instead of in the tent...

Green Saraha

Lost Tribe of the Green Sahara, the article about Gobero is published in National Geographic magazine:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/green-sahara/gwin-text

Green Sahara Press Release at National Geographic Headquarters, Washington DC

Yesterday was the press release for the Green Sahara story in National Geographic Magazine, based on the excavations at Gobero. Members from the various expeditions convened in Washington, DC for the announcement.

The press release was held in an auditorium at National Geographic Geo Headquarters which sat 200 or 250 people. On stage was a podium with silk ferns in front, a projection screen for slides and close up looks at the artifacts, the triple burial (well, a cast of it) on a rotating stand, a table of harpoons, beads, hooks, points, tools and fauna, and a table with two skulls - one Kiffian and one Tenerean - and the skeleton of the girl wearing the bracelet.


In the hours leading up to the press release, everyone was relaxed and for the most part disaster was avoided. (I would say 'uneventful,' but the whole thing was such an event that it wouldn't be the right word choice). The only glitch was that the warthog skull had been damaged en route from Chicago to the National Geographic podium. Tyler and I had to bust out some super glue to fix it - luckily he'd foreseen such an occurrence and brought glue with him.

The presentation was scheduled to begin at 10:30. The press and public were let in about 30 minutes before that. The auditorium began to fill with people holding copies of the new, unreleased National Geographic containing the article on the Gobero site - and I hadn't even seen it yet! Other team members and affiliates there were Gabe, Shureice, Tyler, Didier, Mike, Peter, Phil and Ide.

Paul Sereno, Elena Garcea, Helene Jousse, and Chris Stojanowski all spoke at the event. After a brief introduction, Paul spoke first and before he introduced the site, he mentioned a few of the team members in case the press wanted interviews. He introduced Gabe - the founder of Project Exploration, Didier, Shureice, and myself, I was really touched.

Helene, Elena, and Chris all highlighted different features of the site. I learned something new at the presentation when Chris showed an incredibly complicated plot of cranial-metrics and explained the theory that like-ness in cranial measurements could be used to estimate the probability of genetic relatedness.

At the end, reports had a variety of questions ranging from "Who are the descendants of the Tenereans?" to "What does this site tell us that we don't already know?" I was surprised at the second question, but I guess its valid if the paucity of information from this era in the Sahara hadn't been explain to you. As Anne Haour, an archaeologist specializing the region, noted in 2003, "The known archaeological record of Niger consists of series of punctuated episodes of past human settlements, separated by poorly understood gaps." The excavations at Gobero went a long way to filling in those gaps.

After the presentation, we retreated to a restricted access part of the headquarters for a luncheon and everyone kept checking on their iphones the number of websites reporting the site. It skyrocketed over the course of a few hours - Gobero has gone public!

Visit National Geographic for the article and a video about the site: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/09/green-sahara/gwin-text

Lost-in-Time: The 2008 Science Teacher's Field Institute

Looking back in my journal, there's only one sparse entry from the first day - because I was so engrossed in the program - so here's a quick recap:

Working with Project Exploration in Montana has given me an entirely new appreciation of educational programs for educators. Science teachers have to deal with the ever changing classroom, advances in technology and new theories to work into their curricula, and the pressure of being a good role model for their students. Every once in a while they need someone to turn the tables and allow them to be the students for a little bit.

Project Exploration's Science Teachers' Field Institute is a two year program aimed to help Chicago Public School teachers excel in their field and it kicks off with a week of intense training and then a trip to the field. This is no ordinary field trip, it's a week on the Lost in Time Ranch in Montana where 10 CPS teachers essentially become paleontologists, geologists and astronomers. By the end of the trip, they not only have fossils, but also photos, video clips and an incredible amount of positive energy to take back to the classroom with them.

A few highlights of the trip were excavating a triceratops skeleton (pictured above), clearing off some of the hill top above the triceratops skeleton with a backhoe, prospecting for small invertebrate fossils, such as ammonites, looking for the K-T boundary, using the awesome telescope brought by Dr. Mark Hammergren (pictured below, right) to look at the stars in big sky country, and learning about the fossils and geology of the region from Dr. Paul Sereno (pictures below, left).















And the teachers aren't the only ones feeling inspired - all this has gotten me downright stoked about graduating college and beginning a career in the field of archaeology. I know it won't be easy, but I'd like to spend this upcoming year exploring all the possible occupations for an archaeologist - from digging in the field, to teaching, to working in a museum, to whatever else there might be. Wish me luck!

Science Teacher's Field Institute 2008 - Day 1

Lost in Time Ranch

On the first night of Project Exploration's Science Teacher Field Institute, Dr. Paul Sereno, along with myself and Jason, went to the excavation site ahead of the first day of fieldwork to prepare the site for the STFI crew. First, to open up the site, which had been identified on a previous visit, we cleared away tarps and dirt, and assessed what still needed to be done. It became obvious that this job was much bigger that the three of us, so Paul enlisted the help of Jim and Jared - the father and son team who work on the ranch - to use their back-hoe to clear away debris and about 10 feet of dirt over the dinosaur skeleton we are hoping to excavate.

Feeling that we were more likely to get run over by the back-hoe than to be useful, Jason and I went back to the house to prepare dinner. Earlier that day we had stopped in a town called Baker to buy groceries. We couldn't find a grocery store, and so I radioed to Jason's car about whether there would be another chance to stop at a grocery store. As luck would have it, we were not the only ones using the radio frequency and a gentleman informed us that his town does indeed have a grocery store and directed us to it.

Even our shopping trip was eventful. We ran into a paleontologist from Yale in Montana to look for fossil turtles. He was even excavating in the same formation, the Hell's Creek formation, as our crew!

Jason and I bought buffalo meat (after Jason was asked to pronounce our request several times in his British accent) which we cooked into bison burgers that night. We had dinner with Jim, Jared, and Mindy - an amazingly energetic ranch hand - and got ready to start excavating the next morning.

Jason and Ewan celebrate the excavation, note the back-hoe parked in the background