by: Matthew Ordinario
Our first full day of work this week so far! A number of unfortunate occurrences involving bad weather had prevented us from getting to the field on Monday, and forced us to return home before lunchtime on Tuesday. While a break every once in a while is sometimes appreciated, missing days of work right after a weekend made everyone eager to return to the field, if only to spend time with fewer people around.
Today was a big day in terms of our group organization. First, our house assignment crews got switched around. I was put in group two of the rotation along with Rico, Bo, and Alasdair. Because I was switched from group four to group two in the rotation, instead of being on pot washing like I had hoped, I had instead been put on dishes duty which seems to be universally hated by everyone who has to do it. The seemingly never-ending work that comes with dishes duty crushes the morale of most who are assigned to it on that specific day; however I don’t really see it that way. Instead, I would give that description to accessioning the artifacts we find. Having to sort out the artifacts and label them all feels very tedious, even though it is very important to keep track of everything we dig up in the field.
The second change was that our trench assignments got switched up. From what I heard, the shuffling of unit assignments was actually supposed to happen yesterday, but since we had visitors at the site it was decided that we were to keep our original groups so that we could better relay information about our trenches and what we’ve found in them.
While the rearrangement of the house assignment crews was a minor change in my mind, it was the switching of units in the field that probably affected me the most. At the end of last week I finally felt that my unit’s work dynamics had improved and that we were getting a lot more comfortable working together. Today, my unit was assigned to Trench 15 and was formed by Alexis, Eddie, Sopheara, and myself with Ellie as our graduate student supervisor. Today we were also joined by Jared, another graduate student who usually does the mapping but had finished his work early. While I initially had reservations about how our group work flow would form in the beginning of the day, I grew a lot more comfortable as the day went on. I believe that because we had already gotten better at all the different jobs around the trenches, we were able to adapt our own work styles with our new group mates and reach a sort of harmony easier than the first time we had to do it.
My assignment to Trench 15 had seemed like a letdown to me at first since it was the trench closest to my old assignment, Trench 14. I had expected to run into many of the same issues I had run into before: flooding and a whole lot of mud. Furthermore, due to the close proximity of Trenches 14 and 15, I thought that I would also face the same issue of hitting large earthenware sherds and numerous bones every time I would try to dig. When we had first started finding artifacts almost right away at Trench 14, I was very excited because I was looking forward to finding literally anything as I dug deeper into the ground. This excitement peaked when we had found three pots in the trench, and fell off shortly afterwards as it became very tedious to find bones or sherds when we dug. It slowed down our work a lot since we would always try to recover everything as intact as possible. In Trench 15, we ran into what seemed to be the opposite problem. While the people assigned to the trench before us had found many sherds and faunal remains, we ended up finding little of note besides half a bag of sherds and some small bones and teeth. Even sifting through the dirt we removed from the trench seemed like a fruitless endeavor as it would almost always just be clumps of semi-dry mud. However, even though we didn’t find too many artifacts today, the ability to dig freely and quickly felt like a very welcome change from my previous situation.
One final event of note happened today. This would be the last night that Alasdair would be spending with us before leaving to attend a different archaeological project. We had a small celebration for the anniversary of his birth after dinner in which pastries and ice cream were served along with a healthy dose of alcohol for people who wanted some. Over the past three weeks I felt that everyone had bonded so much from living and working together, and seeing Alasdair go will feel like something is missing in the house and in the field. Alasdair marks the first of many departures. Our two members from Cambodia, Komnet and Sopheara, will be leaving us on Saturday, and then all of us will part ways on August 5. Even though our field season is nearly halfway over, it feels like we have just started working. The physical work may be hard and the heat may be strong day after day, but I definitely feel that this experience will be something I will miss when I return to America.
Our first full day of work this week so far! A number of unfortunate occurrences involving bad weather had prevented us from getting to the field on Monday, and forced us to return home before lunchtime on Tuesday. While a break every once in a while is sometimes appreciated, missing days of work right after a weekend made everyone eager to return to the field, if only to spend time with fewer people around.
Today was a big day in terms of our group organization. First, our house assignment crews got switched around. I was put in group two of the rotation along with Rico, Bo, and Alasdair. Because I was switched from group four to group two in the rotation, instead of being on pot washing like I had hoped, I had instead been put on dishes duty which seems to be universally hated by everyone who has to do it. The seemingly never-ending work that comes with dishes duty crushes the morale of most who are assigned to it on that specific day; however I don’t really see it that way. Instead, I would give that description to accessioning the artifacts we find. Having to sort out the artifacts and label them all feels very tedious, even though it is very important to keep track of everything we dig up in the field.
The second change was that our trench assignments got switched up. From what I heard, the shuffling of unit assignments was actually supposed to happen yesterday, but since we had visitors at the site it was decided that we were to keep our original groups so that we could better relay information about our trenches and what we’ve found in them.
While the rearrangement of the house assignment crews was a minor change in my mind, it was the switching of units in the field that probably affected me the most. At the end of last week I finally felt that my unit’s work dynamics had improved and that we were getting a lot more comfortable working together. Today, my unit was assigned to Trench 15 and was formed by Alexis, Eddie, Sopheara, and myself with Ellie as our graduate student supervisor. Today we were also joined by Jared, another graduate student who usually does the mapping but had finished his work early. While I initially had reservations about how our group work flow would form in the beginning of the day, I grew a lot more comfortable as the day went on. I believe that because we had already gotten better at all the different jobs around the trenches, we were able to adapt our own work styles with our new group mates and reach a sort of harmony easier than the first time we had to do it.
My assignment to Trench 15 had seemed like a letdown to me at first since it was the trench closest to my old assignment, Trench 14. I had expected to run into many of the same issues I had run into before: flooding and a whole lot of mud. Furthermore, due to the close proximity of Trenches 14 and 15, I thought that I would also face the same issue of hitting large earthenware sherds and numerous bones every time I would try to dig. When we had first started finding artifacts almost right away at Trench 14, I was very excited because I was looking forward to finding literally anything as I dug deeper into the ground. This excitement peaked when we had found three pots in the trench, and fell off shortly afterwards as it became very tedious to find bones or sherds when we dug. It slowed down our work a lot since we would always try to recover everything as intact as possible. In Trench 15, we ran into what seemed to be the opposite problem. While the people assigned to the trench before us had found many sherds and faunal remains, we ended up finding little of note besides half a bag of sherds and some small bones and teeth. Even sifting through the dirt we removed from the trench seemed like a fruitless endeavor as it would almost always just be clumps of semi-dry mud. However, even though we didn’t find too many artifacts today, the ability to dig freely and quickly felt like a very welcome change from my previous situation.
One final event of note happened today. This would be the last night that Alasdair would be spending with us before leaving to attend a different archaeological project. We had a small celebration for the anniversary of his birth after dinner in which pastries and ice cream were served along with a healthy dose of alcohol for people who wanted some. Over the past three weeks I felt that everyone had bonded so much from living and working together, and seeing Alasdair go will feel like something is missing in the house and in the field. Alasdair marks the first of many departures. Our two members from Cambodia, Komnet and Sopheara, will be leaving us on Saturday, and then all of us will part ways on August 5. Even though our field season is nearly halfway over, it feels like we have just started working. The physical work may be hard and the heat may be strong day after day, but I definitely feel that this experience will be something I will miss when I return to America.