Update

The blog is changing, sort of.

I in fact do other things besides archaeology, and some of them are interesting too.

Its still going to be about archaeology (because well, I am an archaeologist), but it will not longer be solely about archaeology. Though I hope to go on another dig this summer, and bring many more adventures in archaeology to you. I didn't want to start another blog just to talk about other aspects of my life. Plus I kinda need to fill the downtime for when I'm not on a dig, or if not much is going on at the museum. Which does happen.

Maybe I'm being lazy, be I don't really want to start another blog, I've already got two. That seems like enough, especially when I don't have much time for either of them. But occasionally I do want to talk about things that don't fit on the writing blog or the archaeology blog. So things will change here, but not too much. Now it will just encompass all of my adventures.

Finals are Hell

And its not even finals week. What the hell? Finals week starts next week, it hasn't even been dead day yet. You know, the day where I'm supposed to kill myself studying. And yet I have a final tomorrow. Okay, not a final, because finals are not allowed on the last day of classes according to university policy. So instead we're having an exam, not a final, notice the difference (the spelling). So if you call your final an exam and tell the class that you are not having a final (as in no test on the scheduled final day) you can totally get away with having finals on the last day of class like a jerk. Way to subvert the system.

This wouldn't be so terrible if I didn't have a 3000 work paper due the same day, or the 8 page paper due before that, or the other 3 finals that I have. I suppose I have a total case of senioritis, and still a year left to go. All I really want to do is  work on my own projects. The independent study for next year on the aryballos I have been complaining about is morphing into a monster that I have yet to tell my professor about. I'm not sure how I'm going to break it to her, or what that's going to mean...

In the mean time here's some pictures of stuff in the old world cabinet at the museum. Eventually I'm going to go through it to make sure we're not missing anything, but not right now. Currently a whole lot of other things need to be reorganized, or more correctly put in their proper places. That's going to take awhile, and with school going the way it has been it doesn't leave much time for volunteering, probably less next term. We'll see.

Archaeology in the Library

Yeah, I know this isn't one of the better Indiana Jones movies. In fact its probably ranked below Temple of Doom. But there are some great one liners, and in this scene has a very important one. A student is asking Doctor Jones about some reading to which he does give a better reference to the student and then declares, "If you want to be an archaeologist, you have to get out of the library!"

While that is true, a great deal of your time will also be spent in the library. You need to look up old excavation reports, look for similar pieces, and histories of the sites you are studying. If you're lucky you find more recent publications, mostly from the eighties some nineties, but these are rare. You'll find a whole lot from the fifties and sixties, and even forties and thirties. Not that these aren't helpful, and don't provide a wealth of information, but what you have to remember is that archaeology was very different back then. The sixties not so much, but if we look back to Doctor Jones here, he is a very different kind of archaeologist.

The term that would better suit Dr. Jones is antiquarian. Antiquarianism is a step above treasure hunting, but not by much. You won't see Indiana Jones with pot sherds. No, he's after the good stuff. Gold, precious stones, the ark of the covenant. In its very early years archaeology was the hobby for the bored and rich. If you had the money you would fund excavations and even go on them yourself. Lots of sites, artifacts, and tombs are named for their rich discoverers (the Elgin marbles, tomb of the baron, etc). As a result we have plenty of excavated sites, but little information on them as the only interest was in the 'treasures' they held. So when looking at these older publications you need to remember what kind of archaeology was being practiced. What were the excavators interested in, and what might they have ignored because of the time they were practicing in.

These old books can be helpful in understanding sites, but I can only imagine what else has been left out, determined to be unimportant back then. Things that are a mere side note, that we will never see again, and who knows what information it could have yielded if only it had been set aside for a time when we had the understanding and technology to look at it.

An Awful Lot of Trouble

So here is the aryballos I'm working with at the Arizona State Museum. It got fancy pictures taken.

My original thought is that it is a late Proto-Corinthian aryballos dated to about 650-630 BCE. Much like this late Proto-Corinthian aryballos.

Note the similar shape, and the scale pattern. Also if you were to turn it slightly, to see the handle, you would see vertical stripes on both.

But wait... What is this?

And this one?

Both of these also bear striking resemblances to my piece at the museum. The first is classified as Etrusco-Corinthian and the second as Italo-Corinthian. And what does this mean for my piece? Is is still Proto-Corinthian? What is Etrusco-Corinthian and Italo-Corinthian?

Etrusco-Corinthian pottery is pottery that resembles and was inspired by Corinthian pottery, but was made in Etruria, possibly by Etruscans.
This is the same for Italo-Corinthian, except its Italy, not just Etruria, which is a part of Italy (if you didn't know).

This means that I have no idea what to call my piece, other than an aryballos, because it is unmistakably that shape. I have a lot more work to do. Luckily I'll be doing an independent study on it, so I'll be getting some credit for it. I also have a meeting tomorrow with yet another archaeologist who specializes in Italy. So more news to follow. Until then, this little mystery is driving me crazy.

Aryballos Update

So this little thing is gonna help me get into grad school.
Why?
Because it is an unpublished and excellent example of Corinthian pottery.
The key word here is unpublished. As in no one has ever written about this particular piece. Mostly because its been languishing away in a store room of a museum that specializes in South Western artifacts. But nonetheless, that fact makes it interesting. Donated back in the 1900s, mislabeled because of where it came from, this piece has an interesting history. What is most interesting is that it is labeled as coming from Pompeii, which I suspect is why they decided it was Roman.
Even more interesting is that it really could have come from Pompeii, just not Roman Pompeii. Pompeii is not just a Roman city, it has a much longer history than that. Before the Romans the Etruscans decided it was also a great place to be. And very interesting about the Etruscans was that they really liked these little Corinthian aryballoi (plural for aryballos). Could this little piece have found its way through trade?
So back to how this is going to help me get into grad school.
Well, I'm not the only one who finds this piece interesting. Since I'm working on relabeling it, I've been consulting with my Greek archaeology professor. She thinks its a great project, and that it would make a great paper. In fact, she's wanting me to publish on it. And a publishing credit on a grad school application, makes me highly desirable. Because its rare. Its just not something that undergrads usually do, frankly we're too busy with regular school to work on side projects. Its possible that I can do an independent study, but I think by the time that rolls around I'll have done most of the work already. So there you go, volunteering can pay off.

What I'm Doing Now... And How My Knowledge of Greek Pottery Came in Handy

So, I know its been awhile, but I'm very proud of myself today. Not that its been awhile since I've been proud of myself, but that I haven't been very good about posts.

Since school has started I've been spending my spare time (which isn't much) volunteering at the Arizona State Museum. I work in the archaeological collections department, mostly organizing as during the move between buildings quite a lot of things have gotten mixed up. Also what you actually see in the museum is not even half of what the museum actually has. Its been collecting things since the 20s, and when you have that much stuff things can go astray fairly easily, and those things are easily put off. So things are a confusing mess. To make it harder, in the early days they didn't always keep the best of records so sometimes things don't quite match up, as was the case today.

So this was pulled for a pottery class. The piece itself was labeled as coming from Pompeii, they called it a Roman vase, and dated it to 79 CE (That's just the date of the eruption at Pompeii). Now that you know that lets take a step back. So I was readying these pieces for pictures, a collection of Roman, Greek, and Etruscan pottery, and matching printed labels with the correct pieces. But when I came across the Roman vase label, I couldn't for the life of me find the corresponding pot. My boss came and helped, and found this, the numbers matched, but the first words out of my mouth were, "That's not Roman."

Luckily my boss is awesome. So I explained what I believed it to be, looked up some examples online, and contacted my Greek Archaeology Professor to get her opinion. And, YAY, turns out I was totally right! This is a big difference. It makes this little pot about 600 to 700 years older than originally thought. Its a late ProtoCorinthian Aryballos. I recognized it by the shape, which is the biggest clue. But also there is a scale pattern below the handle (sorry it's hard to see in the picture). So there you have it, I've now used my knowledge of Greek Pottery outside of the classroom.

Back!

Sorry for the long pause. Brandon and I were in Oregon at the Oregon Star Party volunteering with my lovely friends from the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Also my transition back the U.S. was not so awesome. Turns out those antibiotics I took in Spain really did a number on my digestive system, and I've been sick after every time I've eaten since getting back. It took a while to figure out what was wrong, but now I'm on a diet of yogurt to fix it.

But oh the things I have to tell you.

So you all know the massive problems with the dig that I was on. It was pretty much all I could talk about. But what you didn't know was that my professor here was responsible for getting me on the dig. She knew that I was looking for something to do over the summer and her newest grad student was running a field school in Spain. Said grad student is from Spain, and is now in the phd program here. Turns out he's in one of my classes. Which of course is awesome. And by awesome I mean dear god someone shoot me. This is of course made better by the fact that she asked me how the dig went. I wasn't going to lie. I told the truth. I told her about features being rebuilt, about the lack of archaeological integrity and the sheer lack of ethics. And, of course, she was concerned (to say the least). The natural question from her was why didn't I go to 'said grad student'. I made up an excuse. But honestly what went on at that dig was wrong, pure and simple. There is no getting around this. Now my professor is his graduate adviser so I've no idea what will happen next. What I do hope is that this grad student will learn something. Because from what I saw, he didn't see anything wrong with what was going on.