Shoveling is Kind of Dangerous

Today was a day of heat and hard labor.  We started off thinking today would be an easy day to just finish things up.  Yeah.  Not so much.  The first half of the day was well spend digging a few centimeters below where the body was, but we ended up not finding anything.  We also did some mapping and some leaf sifting.  We also shovel skimmed the two back units that we had left at a higher level and brought everything down to an even 50.  Again, nothing was found.  We were kind of upset because that was a lot of extra work for nothing, but it was fine.

What our pile of dirt felt like.

After lunch, we needed to backfill.  This requires someone to put all of the dirt you have taken out of your unit back into the unit.  The piles were gigantic since our excavation site was six meters square and 50 centimeters deep.  Lots of shoveling occurred by three of us whilst the others continued sifting leaves.  I have determined that shoveling is the devil.  I hate it.  And it was really hot out.  Now, I’m not complaining.  Because I did all the work without saying anything and we got it done before the end of the day.  I’m just saying there was little fun to be had except for the occasional song tat broke out.  Today we sang all of “Let’s Get Down to Business” from Mulan and “The Circle of Life” from The Lion King.  We’re considering starting a forensic a cappella group.  Eventually, Nick took pity on us and helped us shovel.  After we were all finished with that, we needed to clean all the tools we had used in the field so they could be clean for next years group and so we could return some of them to ARC services.  This basically entailed brushing the dirt off of EVERYTHING.  SO MUCH DIRT.  Some things don’t clean easily, such as tarps that have been on the ground and under piles of backfill for two weeks during rain and heat.  But we managed.  Let’s just say the shower I took today was about twice as long as most other showers. 

What our pile of dirt realistically
looked like.

Tomorrow is our first day in the lab.  It was sad to leave the field, but I’m excited to do some analysis and put all of our data to use.  Thus afternoon, Jackie, Lauren, and I ordered pizza and much television was watched.  I enjoy this schedule thoroughly.