It was a melancholy feeling to be starting our final day. Though the trip wasn’t over yet (Istanbul make some noise), we were still ending something here. The feeling of a Sunday night before work on Monday was prevalent in the camp. Though I felt forlorn, I was determined to make the most of my last day. Thus, I set out with the energy and preparedness to make these final moments the best I could.
We began with more digging! Returning to the first site we excavated at, I was disappointed to see that there were already three researchers digging in the square I had claimed previously. I suppose it is somewhat of a compliment to know that my square was so fruitful it deserved a whole team of experts, but it was still a bit disheartening. I ended up sharing a square with Isabella, and we set to work on opposite sides.
I’m too powerful…
Digging today was even harder than yesterday. I was sat in an unfortunate corner where a lot of bedrock was piled, which essentially meant I would’ve had better luck with a jackhammer. As it was, I had only a rock, a screwdriver, and pathetic noodle arms. These didn’t serve me very well, though surprisingly, it wasn’t my arms that gave out first, but the rock: I bashed it too hard too many times, and it cracked totally in half. This was an unlucky but hilarious development, and I took a break to reapply sunscreen and find a new tool.
After a few hours of digging, we were all hot, dusty, and ready to go back. In particular, I was covered in a layer of sunscreen, sweat and dirt, and my clothes had changed color. Everyone was excited to get to camp, but especially me, because a shower had never seemed more appealing. The damage was so bad that I even felt compelled to wash some of my clothes in the sink, though to be fair, a lot of other people had been planning a laundry session for a while. After showering, scrubbing, and just generally scouring my body and clothes, it was back out onto the field (following lunch, of course).
Behold the might of my bones.
Luckily for my new state of cleanliness, we didn’t go back to digging. Unluckily, we were surveying instead, which meant climbing steep cliffs of rock and picking out bones. We were looking for green breaks in particular, which are breaks that occur right after death instead of thousands of years later. Our goal in this mission was to divide our finds into breaks made by predators and marks of early hominid butchery. I collected a large amount, mostly because I was grabbing anything that looked remotely suspicious. Once finished, we headed back to begin the identifications. It took longer than expected to get the bones sorted out, and even once we were done we weren’t positive in our placements. However, it was already dark, so we put our bones away (crazy statement) and broke for dinner.
A couple of cute mongooses we saw at the museum.
That night, as I lay in my tent for the last time, I thought back on the trip. The friends I made, the sights I saw, the experiences I had: all of it was more than I had ever expected at the start. There really wasn’t anything more I could say that would clarify how incredible our journey was. The only thing left to do was finish strong and return home with one heck of a story to tell.
