students of the 2013 field school

This is our last day at the island! And we finished it off in style with our last swim, lots of music, and of course a chilled beer. We are all happy and excited to have learnt so much, it was an experience to remember. We have made some great friends and memories, and all hope to return to this beautiful island in the future. Luckily all is not over yet for us, we will continue to analyse our finds in order to further our understanding of the Maori occupation at GMI over the course of the semester. It’s not over yet folks – watch this space!

- Lizette and Sophie

Bailey grapples with sampling sediment

At last we grasped the final day of excavation. It was a day of blood, sweat, swearing and tears with the clashing of trowels and the flinging of dirt…

In the morning we trudged to the site with the knowledge of the impending de-turfing facing us. We began to take off the top layer of a section joining two trenches only to be told “Make it bigger!” *sigh* Being brilliant students we diligently de-turfed the selected area. Once we had got down to the next layer and made it sparkling clean we were told “Dig it deeper!”

Dig!

The digging and scraping of trowels continued until after lunch. Then all hell broke loose as the clock struck 3pm. Bailey was summoned to assist in the removal of a muffler cut in half (to be used MacGyver style as a core sample) that was hammered into the drain feature. Meanwhile the team had gathered to furiously scrape and sweep the last centimetres of soil from the drain area. All students had Simon watching and waiting until the job was done. Josh saved the day with his bionic arm making it bigger and digging it deeper before the final time was up. The final day of excavation ended with Simon standing on top of the van with a camera in his hand and a lesson to be had. When you make it bigger and dig deeper you will get a picture worth a thousand buckets of dirt to be sieved.

After the day was done we all had the evening off from tedious paper work and sorting of the daily finds to watch movies and eat junk food like typical uni students.

-        Katherine and Bailey

Our day started with a new transect for survey, marked out by a couple 60 metre tapes and some orange pegs. While three of us began the treacherous journey up the hill in search of artefacts, two of us remained behind to set up our survey equipment, our total station named Olga. Olga was having a bad day and it took an hour to set her up and get her level so that we could record the location of anything we found today. However, back up the mountain, the goats were labelling our artefacts, putting them in small zip-lock bags that we will later analyse in the lab. We soon sorted Olga out and managed to record all our 600 artefacts for the day! That’s a lot of fire cracked rocks!

Just when we thought the worst was over, we were given instructions to excavate the midden (AKA the blob of soil with shells in it) that we had found three days previous. This was not an easy task! We were actually 1000 metres above the ground (or so it felt), dangling off the edge of the eroded cliff, holding a spade in one hand and a bucket in the other as we adopted some extreme archaeology techniques. With our feet placed precariously on the moving ground we swung our spades in a feeble attempt to de-turf the shell midden.

Once we had used all our strength to hack out the turf layer, we began to excavate down and found some fire cracked rocks and little pieces of obsidian. This required some sweet balancing skills paired with some great total station moves as Sophie had to balance on top of the midden in order to shoot in the coordinates of the artefacts.

Photographing each layer above the midden was another test of how far we were willing to sacrifice ourselves in the name of archaeology. It required the entire force of our five strong team to take just one photo, not because we were technologically challenged, but because we had to hold Emma down so she wouldn’t lose balance and plummet down the hill!

Things got more difficult when the island’s microclimate threw a tantrum and couldn’t decide whether or not it wanted to rain, so we were constantly on alert, ready to sacrifice life and limb to protect the total station. Note that our total station was right at the bottom of the slope, 100m down the road, so we were in for a long sprint, thankfully it didn’t come to this!

Overall it was a productive day and we really enjoyed ourselves, even if we were facing great peril (or so we thought). We look forward to seeing what the excavation of the midden will reveal tomorrow and hope that no one falls off!

- Shannon and Emma A.

During the season staff are busy helping students throughout the day and building their knowledge in the evenings with lectures. After the days work is done there is always more project related work to be done on the databases as well as other personal work, whether it be writing applications for grants, keeping up on everyday work, working on a PhD, or preparing to embark into graduate studies. Often in the quarters someone can be seen working late into the night, only to get up early the next morning to do it all again.

The staff on the project, be they professional staff or graduate volunteers, gladly take on the work because as hard as they fall into their beds each night, the work is in an amazing place and the students are grateful for the opportunities and experience shared with them – and that makes it all worth it. Also, we get to avoid Auckland traffic for a few weeks!

- Josh

Personally, we (Liam and Sophie) took the opportunity to take a look around the island, climbing to the top of one of the several pa sites scattered around the island.  Yet, after a week of archaeology the world all of a sudden looks very different, and even when we were free to do whatever we wanted, this group of archaeology students couldn’t help but notice all the stone artefacts and especially the fire cracked rock strewn around the place.  Although our eyes were fixed on the ground, the spectacular landscape was still evident and impressed us all.

It was then time to cool off following our climb and we decided to visit one of the otherher beaches.  While not everyone was keen to jump in at first, eventually we all had a look round the rock pools and discovered that despite the long distance (150 m) this beach was worth the walk.

So that was our (half) day off.  A chance to rest, recover and recharge that left us well prepared for the final week which promises to be at least as busy as the first.

- Sophie and Liam

-          Emma and Leisa

The image that previously came to mind when thinking about excavation was someone sitting in a ditch and leisurely chipping away at a bit of soil with some kind of small tool or brush as opposed to arduous. In reality, it’s actually some of the toughest work we’ve ever done. You are literally spending a full working day bent over, breaking your back, and digging through sediment scouring for bits of stone that, unless you know what you are looking for, you would probably usually ignore. We have been finding some incredible artefacts so far, including obsidian flakes, stone flakes and chert cores. The most common find at this stage is fire-cracked rock, and the mere sight of it has become somewhat of a running joke; but really we are very lucky to be finding so many artefacts.

Where does all the extra soil go when we’ve dug it up out of our trench? It goes into large (and exceptionally heavy) buckets to be sieved, where we hope to find even smaller bits of special stones. It is very hard work, and both of us were incredibly tired and sore by the end of our day today, but we have to admit it is the most fun we’ve had in SUCH a long time. It has been a lot of fun to be toiling in the dirt and singing songs, making jokes and light banter, and discussing the wider context of the artefacts and features we are looking at, such as the pit, postholes and drain in our trench.

It is a wonderful feeling to have a cool swim in the beach that is literally right behind us. It’s funny seeing all the people with their yachts come and stay the day while we are up on the hill, intent on our work. We have also enjoyed watching the cute sheep get herded around by the dogs, and we have to temporarily stop work to guard our work areas and equipment. It was hilarious to watch from the hill top as a whole flock of sheep surrounded Joe below us as he protected the Total Station and just stare at him. Looking back at the time we’ve spent so far we are realising just how much we’ve learnt already, and listening to our lectures makes us realise just how much we have to learn, and will probably continue to learn for a long time. There really are very few people who have the opportunity to participate in this kind of activity, and there are even fewer who are able to roll around in the dirt all day, not shower for days (and days, and days, and days…) and not have to experience the strange stares of passers-by.  As you can see below, Emma decided to take advantage…

Here’s to another day at the office tomorrow!

Emma and Rochelle =D

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to wake up in the mornings despite the sheep calling in our ears. However, once we are up and running its all action at base camp (queue epic explosion soundtrack). Bags packed, sunscreen on in large amounts fuelled with the anticipation of finding artefacts that will make all the other students jealous.

Cut to scene…

Picture this, students labouring in the blistering heat with sweat dripping down their soil-covered faces; muscles twitching under the strain of the trowel shifting earth to reveal the precious material below (mostly fire-cracked rocks that have been superheated to the intensity of 10,000 suns) for us to find.

NZ archaeology

As we toiled in the field, digging into the past and scaling cliff faces like mountain goats, a herd of sheep came to see what we have uncovered, all 800 of them as they were off to frolic in the paddocks on the other side of the island.

Cut to trench…
Trenches were removing vast amounts of artefacts such as obsidian and basalt flakes, precious materials sourced from great distances by prehistoric occupants. Deep post holes were uncovered, hinting at the possibility of structures covering the site. Excavation of sites is not as simple as just digging in the ground but has a technique to record each level of soil deposit (change in colour of the soil as it excavated down) which is very time consuming. Only small pieces of deposits can be uncovered at a time, beckoning curiosity and leaving students eager to tackle the site the next day to see what emerges.

Cut to cliff face…

Students are frantically scaling a steep, eroding bank like hungry mountain goats, in search of the precious grass that is artefacts. Lasers are shot from the total station (Think R2-D2 sitting on a tripod) to record and store the position of every single artefact in space into our database. This can be used to create a map displaying the distribution of all artefacts across our site. The artefacts are falling out of the cliff at the speed of a chuck Norris round-house kick to the face due to erosion building up at the bottom of the bank.

Although it is all fun and games at camp, when we are in the field the work and artefacts being produced is a real eye opener to the immense power of the human brain and its ability to create the material goods we are finding in the trenches.

- Kody and Mana

Beautiful piece of obsidian

For most people archaeology is excavation.  Although (as you have noticed by the previous two blogs) this is definitely not true, that was the main task assigned to us for the last three days. We learned new techniques like spade jumping, troweling and keeping a watchful eye for tiny artefacts. Gardening may be a fun activity for most people but taking the turf out is a very difficult job which we had to deal with on the first day. The real excitement came when we found stone artefacts like obsidian (volcanic glass), fire cracked rocks (in abundance) and basalt flakes (mostly broken).

Archaeologists at work!

Some excavation teams were lucky enough to hit the bottom of kumara pits or drains. Filling buckets and buckets of the dug out material and sieving it for even tinier artefacts made this job very time consuming. While digging deeper and wider, we have to be very careful not to disturb any features lying underneath. Excavation also makes you very familiar with forms- for a hole in the ground we filled out three different forms. Although this might sound tedious, it is now a second nature. We had the best introduction to archaeology through excavation and all that we have been reading about has finally become a reality.

- Sayali and Sophie

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Dear Dig Diaries

After waking up refreshed from a deep sleep in a tent (who would have known) we dived into another day of uncovering New Zealand archaeology on Great Mercury Island. With trowels, spades and developing blisters the excavation teams went on their way. The survey teams, on the other hand, were already underway, setting up for an eventful day two. Our job as members of the survey team was to ensure the spatial position of all subsurface finds were recorded and they were entered into a database which will wait patiently for when we get back to the mainland to analyse. Some of the awesome discoveries in excavation that were made, which we in turn recorded, included postholes, a drain and even a potential rua (storage pit)! What we learnt very quickly whilst surveying is that when you’re on survey you are a very popular person, and in high demand amongst the various excavators. When we weren’t frantically running between trenches we found ourselves immersed in registering the hundreds of artefacts.

while we surveyed
throughout the day
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we were treated to
while we surveyed
throughout the day

Ingrid, as we affectionately called our total station (refer to previous blog post) tends to be a tad grumpy in the morning and today was no different, making an already difficult task even worse. By the afternoon however, Ingrid was friends with us again and we were back to recording like crazy. The major benefit of survey was that we got to keep an eye on everything that was happening in all three trenches. This meant we were often the first to find out about any big discoveries and could help by circulating this info around to the other excavators.

Regardless of Ingrid’s behaviour we ended the day on time, happy with how the day had gone and with the finds that were made. With grubby bodies and the reddish tinge of sunburn there was nothing else to do but head down to the beach and jump into the crystal clear water. For now we can rest our bodies and only wait in anticipation for tomorrow and the finds we might make.

-          Bailey and Corrine