Over the course of the past few weeks, we have been reading various articles with information about sites, history, and other topics that relate in some way to our own site or serve as a comparison to our own site. The intent of these reading was that we would be able to take the information gained and apply it to our own findings and to form conclusions and ideas based on the information and have an “ah ha!” moment. Last Monday, looking proudly at the finished Trench 3, I had such a moment. Previously, while cleaning one of the Loci, I realized that a rock trapped in our trench wall was very clearly worked. No longer was it a rock but a stone! What I realized Monday was that these were the very same worked markings that we had seen on various artifacts in the museums we have previously visited. That’s when it hit me, that what we are doing, where we are working, what we are learning, is all archaeology. We are Indiana Jones discovering the Lost Ark! Up until that point, I had only lifted rocks, pulled roots, dug holes, and scraped dirt. Suddenly, I realized that I removed rocks to see stone underneath, pulled roots to reveal loci, not dug holes but created level surfaces, scraping dirt was no longer scraping dirt; all along we had been excavating. The information I gained at the museum, the observations I made regarding worked stone, helped me to realize something about the very trench that I had been working on for some two weeks. Our course has taught us to take what we see, to take what we know and have learned, and to bring the two together to create a conclusion. We are analyzing what is buried in the earth to better understand what is buried in our history. Ah ha!
