The InstaMold Experience

Today was the very first day I have ever been able to wear a sweatshirt in the field, and it was absolutely glorious.  Our activities today consisted largely of mapping some of the clothing, getting infinite measurements, and removing the rest of the skeleton from the burial.  After this was achieved, we leveled the ground underneath to see if any evidence had sunk below the bone.  So far, this has yielded very little, meaning nothing, but we’re going to take the whole area down another five centimeters tomorrow, as well, so we shall see how that goes.  We’ve also been continuously sifting through the leaves, which is disheartening and boring.  That will also continue tomorrow.  Today was the penultimate day of fieldwork, which is kind of sad because I really enjoy the field. 

After lifting the shirt of the skeleton out of the burial, we encountered a preserved footprint underneath it, so we were pretty sure it wasn’t one of ours.  We were then faced with the problem of how to preserve such a thing.  Real forensic anthropologists use a special kind of plaster for such things.  Heidi went to Michael’s, which yielded InstaMold.  If you think this name sounds exciting, it’s because it does.  InstaMold leads to adventures.  This is mostly sue to the fact that the directions give no clear instructions on how much water goes with an amount of InstaMold powder.  This resulted in an abundance of trial and error by me, the InstaMold representative.  It was also kind of humorous because to make the solution in, Heidi bought us a blue bucket with a sand shovel.  So that’s what I was stirring with.  Yes.  Anyway, eventually the texture became less gelatinous and more pourable.  So we’re letting that cast sit over night.  We shall see.

After lunch, Heidi and Nick through us for a loop.  Apparently our “informant” decided to tell us that something had been thrown outside of the fenced area.  This left us with a secondary site to survey in the extreme abundance of time we had left.  To make matters even better, this site is larger than the one we started out with.  And we had to finish it by the end of the day.  Anyway, we did two pedestrian surveys, which didn’t yield very much.  Eventually we found a flashlight that had been hollowed out, some duct tape, a bike lock, a film canister, and a glove, which was actually an accidental but awesome find.  So we mapped site two and bagged all of that stuff.  That took until the end of the day pretty much.  I also found a tibia from a squirrel, which wasn’t evidence, but was still kind of neat. 

Tonight will be television and LAUNDRY.  MY FAVORITE.