16 July, 2001

It is Monday and it is raining, no, not just raining, I mean RAINING!!! We cannot go out to TEL 079 and 026 because of the weather. We will make up the work on Saturday. Instead, the six of us had a party, yes a party, but it was a catalog party. All data has to be accounted for. When we are in the field excavating, everything must be tagged, identifying what it is, where it is located and the measurements of where it is as well as height according to the datum. A datum is a point of reference in which all measurements are taken from. This gives a clear understanding of a find and it is uniform for all. Everything is checked and cross-checked to prevent problems later. All of the finds will be sent to a laboratory to be analyzed and they need items to be exact with little human error if possible. This will help Dr. Harritt with his final report.

It was a little nicer in the afternoon. I decided to go for a walk along the beach. It was so windy; I had a difficult time standing up. I made a major decision to go back inside and take a nap. Take a nap and eat. We have invented many new and exciting food combinations as time goes on. Look out next years class: WAIT until you try and PB squared!!!!!!

One has to utilize ones day when you cannot go outside. So, I continued with my interviews of our team to discuss the many aspects of anthropology and archaeology. Today I interviewed our fearless leader, Dr. Roger Harritt. He was an Art History major at Boise State University. He later received his Doctorate in Anthropology/Archaeology >from the University of Oregon. His dissertation was on the Northern Alaskan Peninsula, a Late Pre-History of Brooks River. He originally worked for the National Park Service and now teaches at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. He is a researcher at ENRI (Environment and Natural Research Institute), which is at the university. He is currently pursuing several projects with the Wales project being his priority. He has been and is studying how late prehistoric Siberia influences and affected groups in Alaska. He is studying how the people obtained and developed whaling technology. The design models are different in the artifacts and interpretation.

Roger has many objectives to his project in Wales. He is documenting the stratigraphy (layers of soils and how they tell us different ages and time in excavating). We are also obtaining a collection of bones (whale, seal, walrus, caribou, and bear). He is taking samples of wood and bone and will be having them radiocarbodated. And he will be taking tissue samples of prehistoric sea mammals to be compared with modern sea mammals to study to similarities and differences and to see if there were contaminants prehistorically. I think Roger Harritt is a busy person. He also has to deal with six people on this project, which is a job in itself.

Roger is discussing the work with us at tel 079.

This was how tel 079 looked on this date. It changed all of ttime.

I found this blade. I was excited about all of my findings.

We had to constantly look to the stratigraphy for guidance to the next level. Notice the curved lines with the different soils.

The fog was rolling over razorback in this picture. It was hard not to take another picture of Razorback. The camera made me do it.