The Real End

Bon soir,

This will probably be my final blog for a while. I'm not sure how often it will be updated during the school year, but I may try to keep you posted on my studies this year and my research assistantship, in which I will be doing some experimental work: breaking bones with hammerstones so we can study the marks on the bone that are left and the fracture angles of the breaks, which we may be able to compare to the bone fragments that are found at Dmanisi.

It has been a long two months, and I am pretty excited to go back to the US. I have had a lot of fun and met a lot of great people, but I am pretty exhausted from all of the traveling and moving around. It has been nice though that we have been in Paris in the same hotel for the last few days. A nice end to a great summer.

I had a few problems meeting Katie in Dijon. Our flight was a half hour late and I missed the first train so I had to catch the later one. I guess that was really the only problem. At the train station, the person I bought the ticket from didn't speak English but he spoke Spanish, luckily, so I got to use that in Europe. And when I was in Switzerland, these two Spanish ladies came up to me and asked me a question in Spanish. It was very odd that they guessed that I actually would understand them. I had a brief conversation with them too. Very interesting.

Our road trip was very beautiful. After meeting Katie in Dijon, we drove to Montbenoit, FR, which is near the Swiss border and stayed there for the night. It was a very small town but it was very beautiful and had a nice, old church. The next morning, we drove to Interlaken, Switzerland, and on to Brienz, where we camped for two nights. We explored the town for a couple hours, but we spent most of the time driving up into the mountains. We drove up to Hasliberg and Axalp, which are two small towns up on the mountainside. They had wonderful views and the roads were pretty skinny and fun to drive on. After Brienz, we drove north to Germany and into the Black Forest. It was pretty landscape but it was pouring rain so we only decided to stay there for one night in a town called St Georgen. We stayed at a little bed and breakfast right in town, and the food was really good. Our dessert was quite interesting though. We ordered what we thought was a variation of Black Forest cake with pineapple, since only one word was different. The one word was 'Wasser' instead of 'Torte,' which is water instead of cake. We got our deserts and they were two slices of pineapple doused in cherry 'Wasser,' which was basically cherry vodka. Katie couldn't finish her's because it was too strong. I choked it down, almost literally, because I coughed pretty much everytime I ate a piece. Got a good buzz out of it anyways. Ha. After that, we went to Strasbourg, France, which is right on the German-French border. We went to the archaeology museum there and looked around the town at the Notre Dame and some other old buildings. We drove to a little town after this, which we think was called Bergheim. It had a medieval wall surrounding it and was famous for hanging 30 or so women for being witches. Morbid yes, but the town was very cute and had a huge chateau in the hill behind it. They also had a tree still standing and growing from the 13th century. We stayed at a nearby town called St Pie or something like that. The trip was kind of a blur at this point. We then went to Nancy the next day and explored the city. We stayed with a couple right in the city, Francois and Anne Lise. They were extremely nice and interesting people. We chatted with them until about 3 in the morning, accompanied by 3+ bottles of wine. They were very intelligent and our conversations touched several different topics.

After Nancy, we made our way to Paris. The drive was pretty boring, as Katie slept most the way because she may or may not have had too much wine. And by may have, I mean she did. Ha. Anyways, We navigated through the city and found our hotel and then took the car back to the airport. She was pretty freaked out about the traffic, but I didn't think it was too bad. A lot of cars and really slow, but nothing I've never seen before, except for the scores of motorcycles and scooters weaving in between cars. I usually enjoy driving in traffic anyways, so that's why I wasn't so phased by it. We hit a good chunk of the famous sites: Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Luxembourg gardens, and the Louvre, even though we didn't go into the latter. We went to Versailles for the day yesterday, which was ridiculous. Way too big, even for royalty. Marie Antionette's hamlet was really cool though. She had cottages built on the property that resembled the farm houses of the commoners because she wanted to pretend she was one of them. THere were farm animals and plenty of veggies growing. It was really cool. The palace was crazy with tourists, so we kind of rushed through to the gardens, which were beautiful, although extensive. We spent 6 or so hours walking around and only saw half of everything, if that. We went to the Pantheon today and saw the crypt, which houses Voltaire, Rousseau, Marie Curie, Alexander Dumas, and many other French people of historical significance.

Tomorrow is our last day so we will go to the catacombs and see all of the relocated skeletons. Very exciting and creepy. We will also meet up with one of Katie's friends who will be arriving tomorrow.

It has been a great summer, and a great way to close out the trip: A beautiful countryside with a beautiful girl. :)

That's all for now. I hope you all enjoyed my musings and writings. No leopards this year but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for next year.

Au revoir and dzilinebesa (Goodbye in French and Goodnight in Georgian)

Reed

The End

Gamarjobat,

My apologies for not writing any updates for you over the past couple weeks. We have been in Dmanisi majority of the time and have been really busy. Alas, the field season has come and gone and yesterday was our last day in Dmanisi. Reid and Wesley, along with Zack (the field school assistant), left last night around 1:30 for the airport, which we will be doing in two days. A 4:30AM flight is not much to look forward to, but what lies beyond in the rolling countryside of France is well worth the red-eyed sleepiness. :)

With that said, our last few days in Tbilisi will be mostly a chance for us to do some long awaited touristy things, and some shopping. I have purchased many things already, but still have a few things to pick up. I have also somewhat planned out my adventure through the Paris metro system, where I have to change a few trains and then get on a high speed train to Dijon to meet Katie. It should be a hectic morning of rushing around with my giant backpack and suitcase, but hopefully everything will turn out well for me.

As far as the field season went, it was very successful for all involved. We turned up 9 or 10 different hominin specimens, including an upper arm bone and a heel bone, which is the first ever in the fossil record for Homo erectus. They also found an ankle bone a couple years ago and they seem to fit together, or are at least the same size, so they could possibly be the same individual. More study is needed though. Martha and I were the ones who identified the heel bone, as it slipped through everyone else and filtered through to us lowly faunal people. It was a good day for us though, as we had great news to share with our discovery. The arm bone came out of the ground on Tuesday under the audience of about six news stations, the Georgian National Science Foundation big wigs, and the American ambassador, who also joined us for the after party/dinner. There was a large press conference and many great things were said about the cohesion of the Georgian-American partnership and the future of the two country's friendship and alliance. It was a great day for all, and it turned into a great night too.

On a smaller scale, Martha and I accomplished a lot at the site too. We catalogued and identified a couple hundred bones that came out this year, and we are getting a better picture of the site formation. We found many tooth marks on bones and a few cutmarks, so it was a great success. There is a great bed of bones that is ready to be excavated right now but most of it may have to wait until next year. Only the two skulls will come out. See pic below.



On a final note, I am going to be sad to leave this place. Georgia is so beautiful, if you can get past the heat, and the people are wonderful. Mostly, I will miss the friends that I have made and the faces that I have been so used to seeing on a daily basis. I think it is safe to say that of all the cultures in the world, Georgian culture is impossible to find back home and trying to fill this inevitable void will be difficult, but pictures and memories will serve their purpose in the meantime. I hope that I will be able to come back next year, and perhaps many more times in my life. One of my favorite traditional Georgian toasts that I have heard, so far, says in summary, may we live to be 100 and have 100 years of great memories, and I think these memories that I have from here will be cherished all of my life.

Farewell from Georgia, for now. I shall try to write again from elsewhere in Europe.

Nakhvamdis,

Reed

Excavations

Gamarjobut,

I finally had the chance to get my hands dirty. I began excavating last week and found quite a few flakes, cobbles, and various stones, but no bones in my squares yet. I came back to Tbilisi for a few days to work in the museum and will be heading back to work out at the site Thursday. It is also David Lordkipanidze's birthday so we will have a big bash and dinner of shashlik with him and dozens of other people. It should be pretty fun. Saturday is the day of the paleo-Olympic games, in which we test our skills in spear tossing, rock throwing, and various other prehistoric things. I plan on winning several gold medals to hang on my mantle.

The site has produced some small hominin bones so far, but nothing as spectacular as a skull or any limb bones. Just a small tooth and a finger bone, which is still pretty exciting. There are several bones being taken out everyday, and we have our hands full cataloguing.

I posted more photos on facebook so feel free to check them out. We a fun trip on Sunday that entailed tours of a few churches and a castle. We also tried to climb up a basalt escarpment to another castle, but it was too daunting of a task, so we had to quit. It was probably for the best, since I am not much of a mountain climber, nor am I Sly from 'Cliffhanger.'

It's dinner time now. Some delicious Georgian cuisine is in the near future.

Nakhvamdis