Today I went to the site Jenne-jeno to see what archaeologists do. I left with the archaeology crew for the site at 6:30 - bright and early in the morning. We traveled to the site in an old Land Rover. Almost all the doors didn't work properly. You push a button to start the car, not turn a key. The truck rattles so much I am surprised that it doesn't fall apart. We picked up some local workers on the way to the site. When we arrived the sun was about an inch above the unobstructed horizon. The rest of the workers arrived at the site at 7:00. We start work early so we can get as much work done before it gets hot. We leave the site at about 1:00.

There are three different excavation units being worked on at the same time at Jenne-jeno. One unit is located in an area which contained evidence of a house foundation on the surface. Excavation in this area showed so far a grinding stone, pottery, and several house walls. The unit is still going down revealing earlier phases of occupation. Two other units were put in portions of the site that appeared to contain the city wall (a wall which surrounds the occupation area of the site). One of these units is mystifying because even through you can see a portion of the city wall on the surface near the unit, it is not present in the unit. However, the unit did reveal two house walls.

You may at this point think "How the heck can they do all this work alone?" There is a simple answer to this question and that is "They don't." We have about ten workers that help us. Without them the work would be slowed to a snail's pace. At each unit there are about two people digging and making the unit deeper and at least one person screening. Screening is a technique used to sift out pottery and artifacts from the dirt that is picked up from the site. The screen is a 1-cm wire mesh. There are many different tools that you use as an archaeologist. A trowel, which has a diamond shaped blade and a wood handle, a daba, which is basically a big club with a hoe blade attached to the end, and a hand pick, which is like a mining pick but smaller.

I did some profiling of the stratigraphy with my dad at a big section of an erosion gully that had been excavated earlier (I'm going to try to send a photo of this section, but we are having a hard time keeping a connection to the Rice computer long enough to send a picture file). Stratigraphy is the natural or cultural layering of soil over time. Profiling or sectioning is mapping the location of each stratum. My dad and I also did some surveying. Surveying is walking across the surface of the site and recording observations made on the archaeological material present. We found many fragments of tobacco pipes. These are useful time markers because smoking tobacco was not introduced in this area until the early 17th century. I also helped clean up a feature found in an excavation unit. The feature was a small wall from a structure. The dust was really bad and I got it into my eyes.

In a unit it is really important to record where the artifacts come from. You must also take notes and photos. In archaeology documentation is important because you need to know where the archaeological materials came from in the unit to understand the sequence of events that took place in the past.

I had a good time at the site though the last hour nearly killed me because surveying is tiring, the day was getting hotter, and I was getting sunburned!