Well, I made it all the way to the end, though it was a close call by the last day. We finished up all the units that we started, but it took some mad speed to do so. There was a group that tended to move incredibly slowly, so I was assigned to them to help speed things along. It was... kind of a hassle, but whatever. We got it done and finished up all the digging. It kind of felt pointless by the second to last day, because we were dumping our dirt on the back-dirt pile knowing that within an hour or so, we would be putting the same dirt back in the units we just excavated... It seemed a little futile, to say the least. However, we had to make sure the units went sterile and put down the tarps and whatnot (to mark where we finished the levels as well as protecting the surfaces that we uncovered).
After we had everything cleaned, photographed and tarped, we started the back-fill process. Holy crap. My arms still hurt three days after. We started by filling wheelbarrows and dumping them down to keep the tarps pressed against the side walls. We were at this for quite a long time before a front-loader came in to help out and do a lot of the work for us. However, it didn't seem to do as much work as all of us would have hoped. We were loading and running wheelbarrows for a day and a half, constantly. All the dirt that came out of the ground had to be put back. We had a good time, though. We all bonded in our manual labor, I suppose. Haha.
After the hard work, we had Prom. I'm not sure why they call it prom, but it is. It's sorta formal? Kind of? Not really. We just all got together, or most of us anyway, and had a bit of a party/award ceremony. We all got golden (painted) nails that had some sort of personal award for us. My award was "Plumb-bob Square Pants", which has apparently only been given once before, to Lyle Jinks, which is quite an honor in my book. After that we... all got drunk. Or, at least I know I did. Really drunk. More so than I'd like to admit. I just really hope my teachers left before I got too out of hand. Also, I guess I challenged one of my TA's to a foot race? I had flip-flops on and it didn't go too well. I woke up with a huge scrape on my arm that I got from taking a header on the asphalt road. Awesome show, Alex. Good job.
Well, that's the end of the Champoeg dig! I had an excellent time and I really feel like I have a home in the archaeology department; like I did my time in the field or something. I just hope I have as much fun in Scotland! I'll have more frequent updates from Scotland as well, though they still probably won't be very interesting. I leave on the 12th, so I have about a week to hang out and catch up with people. I can't wait!
Thanks!
-Alex
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