Angry noises

So, I posted a bullshit filler on Monday, and nothing yesterday. Why? Because I'm really grumpy.

It just. Keeps. Raining.

Of course it is spring, and it is supposed to rain. I mean duh, that's what spring is all about, without rain the plants wouldn't bloom, the crops wouldn't grow and all that. But I am not a plant, and neither is archaeology.

I can hear the protests "But Marcus, that stuff has been there for a thousand years, getting flooded into, what's one more rain drop gonna do?"

Oh I wish.

Unfortunately when we open a unit we expose any features or fragile artifacts (here it's mainly pottery) to the elements, instead of being protected by feet of dirt. We lost one potsherd when it we exposed to open water as our unit flooded...it just disintegrated. Poof gone. We've pulled out water pumps, and they aren't really that helpful. Sure they'll pull out the foot of water that flows in over night, and we even dug little sump wells so that the water drains there instead of the floor. The problem is that the pump will get all the water and then start sucking air, which will burn out the impeller. So we turn it off. Then the unit floods again 5 minutes later, so we turn it on...work a little...and then repeat the whole process as water oozes out of the floor, through the walls and out the sump well. This makes the floor a mucky mess, which in order to excavate we need to stand on...churning up the muck. Any features (which are signs of cultural activity usually visible as dark stains) are obliterated. It's terrible.

We have so few pits that are digable (well...none of them are really, just some that don't have much information so we just chunk them out as quickly as possible to give it a good faith effort) that people just sit around or pile onto a unit needlessly. Today we had like 12 people excavating one pit. Okay, I lied. We called the pit done and were just running an auger to 4m to do a quick and dirty sample. Not the work of 12 people...3 at most. Hooray. Perhaps next time I'll explain the differences between the phases of archaeology and why this so bad. But for now, trust me, it is bad. Bad archaeology, bad weather, grumpy people, bad news bears.