8-2: Absurd Obsidian

Last night was a great night’s sleep. It was easily the quietest night here in the past two weeks. This morning Jason and Justin had a pseudo cook off to see who could turn out a better omelette and boy was it intense. I’d have to say that Justin won this round, maybe it’ll get tied up tomorrow. Today I spent time in the lab, which consists of relaxing outside on the patio in the shade, doing obsidian work. I had to power through as many obsidian artifacts as possible because it came in waves filling up our inventory the other day. So far, we have about 200 pieces and I was able to get 80 today. Within easy distance of the 100 for analysis back home. Unfortunately, tomorrow I will not be able to put a sizable dent in that total, as we have to work on the informe for the second test pit that was recently “un-dug” as I like to say. It will be just like powering out the endless lab reports back at school! Wooh!

 

Jeff, Justin, and Orvin were able to finish up all of the shovel test pits so everyone will be in the lab tomorrow polishing up paperwork. The days in lab are pretty fun because I can pop out a bit of info on the obsidian while listening to great music of my choosing. Our neighbor came over and chatted with me for a bit about his interest in anthropology as well! He spoke English surprisingly well and once I adjusted to his accent we had a pretty good chat going. He brought over an impressive chert hammer from some Precolumbian period found out in the streets nearby. Jason took photos and measurements to use as more mixed context material. If an object is found in a region that cannot be accurately dated because of any various reason that churned up levels of dirt, it is considered to be out of context. An object typically will be of greater age as you progress lower in the levels of dirt thanks to the Principle of Superposition where levels of material are added sequentially on top of a lower, older level in the stratigraphy. Soooo the hammer was very interesting, but wont lead to much useful information on dating.

 

After finishing up analysis at around three o’clock, Orvin and I attempted to chat for about an hour. I pulled out my computer and showed him what New England is like and he showed me some Nicaraguan interests. Thanks to Google Translate we were able to actually understand each other a bit and connect plus learn English and Spanish, respectively. He is really good with English if I speak in a slower, clear tempo. We watched some music videos of American artists and some Mexican popular artists. It was a good time seeing what he liked and what he thinks is funny. Orvin stayed around for dinner as Justin arrived with a trunk full of great food! Snacks galore! It was an odd night afterwords. We gathered around the tube watching the local baseball playoffs, then America’s Next Top Model (weird, but interesting haha), and a smattering of dubbed Spanish movies. But I am so happy because an English version of Armageddon is on!! The biggest decision I have to make tonight is what book to start next… hmm. Tomorrow we are also going into town to see a theatre performance of local dance traditions.

 

Cordoba, aka Monopoly money!

Some of the brush fire from yesterday. The only way to get rid of trash down here, there is no trash collection service. the kids next door really enjoy watching the fires.

The blue sky against the trees on our land.

A line of fires going. The dry stuff goes right up, but the green is barely burned.