a new round of books!

hello all! I have been to the library yet again and acquired a new set of books for IS. This brings the total of books so far to 26 books! I am writing up a bibliography for Monday and I am sure the list will grow with time. The girl who was checking out my books at the desk today just laughed when she watched me struggle down the steps and up to the counter with my duffel bag full of books. They were super heavy and I contemplated buying one of those metal carts that bag ladies use for my future library trips.

A few updates:

• washing and preliminary sorting of artifacts and debitage is complete
• the fist phase of sorting all of the chert flakes is complete
• We found a piece of baked clay, this is not a piece of pottery, perhaps it is from clay that was too close to a fire or something else that is yet to be determined.
• Copeland Fund proposal was filled out and submitted last week!!
• Beta Analytic lab received my sample and the results should be in around the middle or end of October.
• Writing continues with the methods chapter, problem statement, bibliography. I have outlined pretty much all of the IS, now it is a matter of filling in

Stay tuned or more updates!!! 

Books!

In the past few days I have been working on getting sources for my IS, which means going to the library with a large duffel bag and filling it with books until I can almost not carry it. I procured a selection of books for the first round of research:

All of these will hopefully be helpful in getting me on the right track. All of these have to do with chert and I am going to try and teach myself about the different stages of making a tool are and what flakes are associated with those. My advisor Prof. Nick Kardulias has looked at some of my chert material and believes that some kind of reduction was going on at the site. This means that people were taking large chunks/cores of chert and knapping them into blanks to then be made into specific tools. Today we have a meeting where he will examine my artifacts some more to see what kinds of things I have. We will be going through my 'rocks'.
I also wanted to draw everyone's attention to a certain book.

I found this book at work (Olentangy Indian Caverns) this summer and really wanted to use it. My other advisor, Prof. Mark Wilson, in our meeting on Monday, did some searching and is allowing me to use this source. It has really great descriptions and photos of chert types in the area so I was looking at it as being good for comparing the chert I am trying to identify.

Well there is still a lot of work to be done, I am filling out funding applications for AMS dating expenses and proposals and writing chapters. Busy, busy, busy!

short update

I have realized that in the years in highschool science class where we learned the metric system of measuring, it never stuck with me ....I know I know I am a disappointment and I bring shame to all sciences.

I have to measure out 10-50 milligrams of charcoal to be sent out to the BETA labs for AMS dating and this morning I just stared at the scale that read .20 grams and had no idea what it meant. Thankfully a friend set me straight but I am still having some issue at the moment as the how much the scale needs to read. It will be done correctly, it will just take me a little longer to get it right.

picture of my charcoal!!!

More pictures from the lab to come

IS labwork time

So sorry to those of you that looked for a new blog post in the past month or so, I had some technical difficulties

So far the things that were missed :

Close of the second unit

Move into school with all of the equipment and artifacts delivered to the lab

Preliminary washing and sorting being done

New finds after washing:

Fire cracked rock

Ochre

The fire cracked rock and charcoal were found in unit number one and in the same context layer, these could mean that cooking was going on but could also indicate that chert was being heat treated. The large chunk of chert that was found on the surface of the second unit, pictured in an earlier post, that has the bright reds and blues, has been heat treated. Some types of chert are easier to knap once they have been heat treated. Cherts may have a glossier surface and brighter colors.

So far I have been focusing on the washing and preliminary sorting of the chert as well as getting the charcoal that was collected ready to be sent out for carbon dating. Unfortunately there is not a large enough sample to perform carbon dating but there is enough to perform AMS dating. AMS dating allows dating samples with only a few milligrams of carbon. I currently have 4.6 grams, which is plenty for AMS, I would have needed 20 grams for carbon-14 dating.

All in all IS is in full swing and I am already beginning to write up the field methods