The Dry Bridge Market

Gamarjobat!

My time in Georgia is quickly dwindling and I am getting excited to get home and see everyone (especially Katie, but not kitty! ha!).

Last weekend was pretty eventful, as it was the final few nights for the field school students and we explored some of the Tbilisi nightlife. One interesting place was called the Laboratory, and they had some very interesting alcoholic elixirs of all different colors, including one with matsoni (Georgian yogurt) and cucumber. Unfortunately, they were out of matsoni, so I didn't get to try that one. Laboratory was well off the beaten path, and deep into the labyrinth of Old Tbilisi. The inside was much like a college party house, with graffiti all over the walls, couches, and the aforementioned mixed drinks (read: liquor with a splash of mixer). It also had a nice balcony with quite the view of Tbilisi, as seen in the pictures below. 

Freedom square on the left and the blue lights on the right are a construction crane

 

Nice view of Mother Georgia too

We also went to a few other places the next night, including an attempt to sing karaoke, but it cost 400 Lari (~$250) just to get a table! We ended at a British pub where a band was playing many classic songs from the Beatles to Blur to Skynyrd.

We also went to the market near the dry bridge in Tbilisi, which is in a park between a bridge over a major thoroughfare and a bridge over the river. I have visited this market many times, and probably wrote about it some, but there are many interesting things available for purchase. The market is basically divided into a few different sections. The higher area is more oriented towards Soviet era items, mostly books, paintings of Stalin and Lenin, war uniforms and medals, and various weapons.

The lower park area near the busy street has mostly 'traditional' Georgian souvenirs, and I use traditional loosely. They also have a lot of art in that area. Among the souvenirs, they have many knives, horn core drinking sets (as seen below in all shapes and sizes), small ceramics, magnets, and various wood carvings, and wool hats, socks, and scarves. Some interesting things in this area came to light this year, including the knife seen below and one of the most racist paintings I have ever seen (no picture, sorry).

Horns of all sizes

Yep, that's a Nazi SS knife

The other area of the market is a mix of antiques and electronic gear, along with overlap from the first area of the market. It has every wire, speaker, and remote control you could ever dream of. It also boasts various pirated DVDs and computer games, fine china, and chandeliers. There is also a niche for bad taxidermy (see below). I also saw several flint lock rifles from the 17th and 18th century. They were in pretty rough shape, but the makers marks showed their true ages.

Shash besh! Poor kitty

Anyways, the market is an interesting place to pick up souvenirs and find cool things to look at but not buy. Maybe next year I will purchase that switchblade I have always dreamed of or that Soviet era revolver that would look good in my holster (that I don't have).

Well, as the last weekend approaches, I have wrapped up most of my work in the museum and might just take the rest of my days for sightseeing and 'me' time. Maybe something fun will come up!

Until then,

Nakhvamdis,

Reed

Dmanisi Disco

Gamarjobat,

Sorry for the delay in updating everyone on my whereabouts, but an opportunity came up to go to Dmanisi on short notice so I packed up my bags and spent six days at the site.

Much has happened since my last post, so this one may be long winded.

First, let me update you on the status of the Persian Leopard search. No, I have not seen one, but I have learned that there is one that periodically wanders in to the Lesser Caucasus not far from Dmanisi (the Georgians have a name for him, but I can't remember it). There is a small population in the higher elevations in Armenia, and sometimes they appear in Georgia. So there is hope yet! I did see another jackal though, and it was running through the field behind the dig house.


I went to Dmanisi on Friday with an old friend who used to work at the museum when I first came to Georgia, but he quit after 2010 and I hadn't seen him since then, except for Wednesday night when a bunch of us said goodbye to our Spanish team member Marki (and we kept him out, awake, and drinking until he had to go to the airport at 2AM. Ha!). Anyways, we went to the camp on Friday in preparation for the Paleolithic games that were scheduled for Saturday. I probably have mentioned them before, but the Paleolithic games are a yearly part of the field school where modern humans test their skills at spear throwing and flint knapping (stone tool making). Spears are thrown using an atlatl, which is a way to extend the lever action of your arm in order to throw the spear about twice the distance. I had a successful first throw where I eviscerated the hyena on the target for three points, but I did not have any more stick into the targets after that. Alas, another year without a trophy. I guess I will have to practice up for next year!

The paleolithic games were fun, but the most fun we all had was during the nights at the site, where our aforementioned ex-museum employee supplied the camp with dozens of liters of beer and chacha and talked of old times and great memories. One such story (which actually took place on the night Marki left, but it's still a great story) involved his experiences excavating at a site in Spain with several of the Georgians and Marki. The site was apparently funded for one million euro a year and every person got their own five star hotel room, a chef who made basically whatever you wanted, and a corporate sponsor that was a beer company, so all of the alcohol you could drink. That is a far cry from any other excavation conditions and could have something to do with the crash of the Spanish economy, if other places were funded like this as well. They had many stories about this site, but most involved going to the clubs until they were supposed to wake up and just go straight to excavating, so basically, they didn't sleep for a over a month!

Ok, back to Dmanisi. Well, the weekend was kind of a blur, because most of the time was spent laughing, talking, and dancing to the music coming from the car stereos that were at the camp. When it was dark, and people were going to sleep, we moved the discotheque to an area in the woods near the river and had even more laughs and conversation. The particulars of the laughs may be a little raucous for this medium, and the audience, so I will keep those to myself. However, I did have a great conversation about Prince with one of the Georgians!

Throughout all of the mayhem and bakhmelia, I did manage to work on bones, read many articles, and work on some of my papers while I was there. I found some beautiful cut marks on a bone, and I was very happy about that, since there wasn't much else interesting happening. I also went up to the site to record what was coming out of the ground there and was happy to see more piles of bones coming out of the new test pits. All of these new test pits are adding to the size of the site and it is like no other archaeological site in the world. The more we discuss what is going on here and the immensity of the site, I become more and more aware of how fortunate I am to be involved in a site like this, not only because the material is so interesting and important, but because the international team is so wonderful. There seems to be a slight change in my role at the site this year, as many people are actually interested in what I am doing and ask my thoughts about how the site was form and what it represents. It is nice that my knowledge is finally at a point where I can contribute to conversations, instead of just asking questions all of the time. Hopefully, it will continue to get better!

I also had many great conversations with the field school students, serious and silly. It is truly a great group of students this year, with a rather varied background. We had a lot of fun, and I was, as usual, sad to leave Dmanisi, and I won't make it back down this year. It is always nice to meet new people, make new friends, and strengthen relationships with old friends. Among the new friends I made this year, two of them were little kids from the village, maybe 6 or 7 years old. One of them spoke very basic English (so, basically my level of Georgian) but he was happy to walk with me up to the camp house (because I stayed in the village this year due to no space at the dig house). On the way, he was talking my ear off, in Georgian of course, and smiling the entire time. I was able to keep up with him for a little while, but eventually I couldn't understand much of it. I did catch the part where he said he loves dogs and he asked if I love dogs, so I said yes and he was even happier. He then picked some fruit for me and then said Bye Bye. Before I left, I picked up some Georgian Snickers bars and gave each of them one to secure a friendship! It was great! This is probably one of my best memories of this year, and I hope that when I come back I can converse with them more.

Well, now I am back in Tbilisi, where the heat has finally arrived, for the remainder of my trip. I may take a trip with some Georgian friends for a few days next week, but I am not certain. There has been talk of going to the high mountains of Svaneti, which would be awesome, but it is a long ways away. It looks beautiful and I plan to get there at some point in the future, if not this year.

My work in the museum is going well, as I am closing in on 1000 bones again this year. Our data is now double what it was a few years ago and the mappable material has grown even more, so my dissertation should represent a good portion of the Dmanisi material. I am currently working on the elephant bones, which is kind of fun, since they are so big. We don't have an elephant skeleton in our lab at the U, so it is interesting to see a skeleton up close and personal.

I will try to write at least one or two more times, since I have two weeks left. I will hopefully meet up with some of the field school students in Tbilisi before they leave, and Reid before he leaves next week, so I won't be too alone here. Katie is home now too so we can Skype easily because both of us have internet. After next Tuesday, I will be the only foreigner in Georgia (that I know) so I will hopefully have some fun with my Georgian friends.

Until then,

Nakhvamdis,

Reed

Baby Steps

Gamarjobat!

A lot has happened since the last time I updated everyone. Martha's time here has come and gone already and I am once again the lone occupant of our (my) spacious flat. I am in Tbilisi (unseasonably cool and windy Tbilisi) for a few more days and spent today working in the museum and ended by grabbing some drinks and a meal with Dr. Philip Rightmire prior to his departure tonight. He is one of the foremost experts in the world on Homo erectus and the early Homo species and I have had the chance to get to know him over the last few years, since he is a valuable member of the Dmanisi team. I have picked his brain about many things this summer, from paleoanthropology and politics to fishing and Boston area beer (besides Sam Adams), and it is nice to see familiar faces in the midst of a sea of new ones (i.e. the field school). Tomorrow, our wonderful Spanish team member Mark will be departing in the wee hours of the morning, but we will have a few more laughs in Tbilisi before he leaves. It is that time of the summer, where the team starts to break apart and return to their normal lives.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day in the museum, and then hopped on a museum bus to Dmanisi for Dato's birthday party. The table, which is about 50-60 feet long, was packed from end to end and topped with all of the delicious Georgian fixin's; khachapuri, mtswadi, badrijani, among other things. Oh, ghwino too! And it wouldn't be a supra without a tamada (toastmaster), singing, and toasts aplenty. Great conversations were had in Georgian, English, and Spanish (I only partook in the latter two, but with all of the laughs, the Georgian stories must have been great). I took the museum bus back to Tbilisi and arrived around 11PM.

Speaking of conversations, I managed to have one with a cab driver in Tbilisi, in Georgian! It was very simple, but I could understand most of what he was saying/asking and could reply by conjugating verbs and stringing words together to form sentences, like a real person. He asked where I was from, said he had relatives in New York City, asked if I was working or traveling, and what I did for work, and recommended that I find him for a cab ride down the hill from the apartment, which I did today. It was a conversation using basic vocab, but it was a step in the right direction. My pronunciation is so-so, since many of the sounds are not used in the English language, but I can be understood most of the time. The most speaking I seem to do is with cab drivers, maybe because I have no choice. Most of my colleagues here speak English very well, so it is easy to only use English. I can understand more and more, but in very small increments. I can now say that "I speak Georgian, but poorly" (ვლაპარაკობ ქართულად, მაგრამ ცუდად [vlap'arak'ob kartulad, magram ts'udad]). Although, that is not really true, since I can only say a few things.

In any case, both my research and my language proficiency are progressing, but the former much quicker than the latter. I looked at all of the rabbit bones today, and have been finishing up the small deer and bear bones. We have such an interesting collection that it is hard to decide what order to look at everything. My next mission is to survey all of the elephant bones in our collection for cut marks and carnivore gnawing. We have some big carnivores at our site and they are more than capable of feasting upon an elephant. One animal is a large saber-toothed cat called Homotherium, which is not a true saber tooth, but its teeth are large and have serrated edges, like steak knives. There is a site in Texas that is thought to be a Homotherium den where they were preying mainly upon baby mammoths. It is a very interesting site, and shows what large carnivores are capable of. Anyways, the Dmanisi elephant assemblage should be interesting, whether it be butchery marks, carnivore marks, or nothing, but let's hope for one of the first two!

That's about all that is happening here. I will hopefully return to the site at the end of this week and participate in the Paleolithic games, where we test our skills in spear throwing and other similar activities in which our ancestors needed to hone their skills in order to survive.

I hope to report back with lots of good news about the latest finds, or at least ones I can talk about, and more excavation shenanigans.

I hope everyone is enjoying summer in their respective locations.

Nakhvamdis,

Reed

Second Half

Gamarjobat!

Well, the half way point of my trip has come and gone, and I am now on the home stretch, with quite a bit of work ahead of me. I just returned to Dmanisi from Tbilisi last night and have a few days of work in the museum before going back to the site on Monday, for Dato's birthday party and supra. As usual, that will probably be a great time and there will be an ample supply of mtswadi and khachapuri.

Not much has really happened since my last post, besides my adviser arriving, although without her luggage. It still hasn't shown up and she arrived last Friday, but I guess it is because there is only one flight a week between Paris and Tbilisi on Georgian Airways, so she may get it tomorrow. Otherwise, her three week trip will be limited to a few changes of clothes, most of which she had left in her suitcase in the museum. Besides that hiccup, things are going well.

I worked all of last week in the museum, except for Friday because Maia said they were closing the museum because the police were going to search the premises with dogs. What she neglected to tell me, or didn't know herself, was that the prime minister and the head of some bank were getting a private tour of the museum. Frankly, my work was probably more important. HA!

We went to Dmanisi on Monday and spent a few days there looking at some of the bones that had come out. There are many coming out of the ground now, since the field school is in its second week. I was able to talk to the students more this trip and they seem like a good bunch. They are a pretty diverse group in comparison to the previous years, with students from China, Japan, the Philippines, Switzerland, the UK, Georgia, and America. There is a good mix of graduate students and undergrads from all facets of anthropology, making it an interesting group.

Sadly, that is really all that has been happening here. Pretty uneventful as of now, besides the usual work with bones and things. I have mostly been examining the unidentifiable bone fragments, which are pretty much all that is left to look at. They are generally uninteresting, but we can get valuable information from the degree of bone fragmentation in the assemblage. We also can get interesting information from long bone shaft fragments (fragments from the humerus, femur, radius, tibia, metacarpal, and metatarsals), which we are currently writing a paper about the breakage mechanics of bone when struck with a hammer stone. I also found some to have carnivore tooth marks on them and even a few cut marks, which was exciting. Hopefully, we can keep finding some of each type of marks and at least have some reward for all of our hard work.


Sorry for the brevity of this post, but I will make it up later on!

I'm sure I will have some more stories next time, after my next trip to the site.

Nakhvamdis!

Reed

კარგია საქართველოში (kargia sak'artveloshi)

Gamarjobat!

As my title states 'it's good in Georgia.' I just returned to Tbilisi from Dmanisi and had a great time in the field. I returned because there is limited space at the dig house due to the new class of field school students, which is 15! This is the biggest field school yet and is a mixture of students from all over the world, including the USA, Switzerland, Philippines, and Georgia. I was able to meet them, but in limited capacity as I took the bus back to Tbilisi a few hours after they showed up.

It was a great weekend in Dmanisi, and it started off on a great note! As you may recall from my previous post, there is a shortage of wild animals in Georgia and what I have seen has been limited to birds and reptiles. Well, I am happy to report that I can now add mammals to my list. I rode with Reid to Dmanisi after he lectured at the museum last Wednesday and we saw a roe deer and a jackal on the way. It was nice to finally see some animals endemic to the region.

While I was at Dmanisi, I got a chance to excavate. Reid is opening up new test pits around the promontory in order to fully understand the geology of the area, so I helped excavate M13. It was a fun experience, especially the first day because one of the archaeologists had too much to drink the night before and had to take a nap after lunch for the rest of the day. We found a lot of pottery and bones, including great find in the photo below.

A medieval ქვევრი (kvevri), which is a pitcher for mainly wine, but also grain, milk, and other liquids.

It is pretty amazing to find something that large, laid on its side (Which is unusual, since they were usually buried standing up) in the exact center of a test pit. Reid has a knack for finding them though, since this is his 4th kvevri in his test pits. Luckily it wasn't filled with wine, because the local detox was full with drunks by noon!

Dmanisi detox

Thursday and Friday nights at the site were pretty quiet, but we watched some movies on the projector in the lab. I watched the second half of the new GI Joe movie in Russian (and believe me, you don't need the language to get the gist of the plot) and they found a movie in English for us to watch on Friday, Olympus is Down. Not a bad movie, but the company and conversation over beer and hookah was the best part of the evening. I spent most of Saturday reading articles and writing up the methods section of our journal paper, but I did get a chance to meet another paleoanthropologist who came out to the site for the first time. He was only out for a few hours, and after that, there were only four of us at the site, as most of the Georgians went to Didi Dmanisi for the night. Needless to say, it was pretty boring, so I decided to make some backgammon pieces for the board at the site. I found a great stick and started cutting it with my Leatherman, and soon after I felt my hand stinging from the nettles that were right next to it. The pain was only momentary though. While I was gathering, I noticed Reid was starting a fire, which I assumed was for hot water (since that is how we heat the water for showers), but he was actually on a mission to fix a broken plastic lawn chair with wire and string. We were both in the business of wasting time, and he posited that he could waste more time than me, to which I replied 'how much you wanna bet?' It ended up at about a tie, and I created all thirty backgammon pieces as well as two dice over the course of an hour and a half. Unfortunately for me, the dice rolled mostly fives and sixes, but only when my opponent (Teona) was rolling.

After being destroyed in backgammon, Jimi, the medieval archaeologist, returned and was eager to test out the new toaster/panini press that was purchased for the field school. Much to my delight, he made some delicious Georgian 'burritos' using some Armenian tortilla-like flat bread and some spicy concoction for a filling. They were delicious, and very filling, and we ended up staying up late, having some wine and beer, and discussing many topics from the Russians to Georgian wine to the intricacies of the Georgian language (which I am beginning to understand more and more [about time after four years!]). It was a fun night.

Sunday was pretty boring, and I read some more and worked on some things. I was waiting for everyone to arrive so I could take the bus back to Tbilisi.

I worked again at the museum today and looked at a lot of bones. I have gone through all of the horse bones that we haven't looked at, and am happily on pace to look at over 1000 bones for the summer.

Martha arrives on Friday and we will be going to Dmanisi again next week probably.

This week, I have decided to spend more time learning Georgian and brushing up on my Spanish, because I really want to be fluent in another language and I need to push myself to get to that level. Spanish will be the attainable goal for the near future, since I have six years under my belt and can read it fairly fluently. I really wish I could speak Georgian though, so I could talk to everyone who doesn't know English well. My goal for this summer is to finish my 'Learning Georgian' book and be able to understand more of the conversations around me. Speaking is a whole other issue that will come around with time and practice, but actually listening for verb conjugations and common words is an attainable goal. I had a makeshift conversation with the taxi driver last night, but I wish I could have explained things better. Katie and I also have aspirations to learn German, which started last fall, but we will try to pick it up again this fall.

Anyways, this reminiscing and rambling is thanks to some Konig Pilsener ludi and some Saperavi dry red wine, so I hope it is coherent! Ha!

I will report again soon.

Nakhvamdis,

Reed

Gamarjobat!

Another field season is underway and much has happened so far since I arrived to Georgia, so please forgive me for not updating for a while.

First off, I said goodbye to Katie yesterday morning as she had to go to France for her excavation after spending ten days here with me. We had a great time and got to see many parts of Tbilisi and some of the Georgian countryside. We also enjoyed much of the culinary delights that Georgia has to offer. Refer to Katie's blog, Mea Minneapolis, for her take on the sights that we saw, since I had been to most places and have commented on them in previous blog posts.

However, we did go to a few places that I had never been before. One such place was an old mountain town on the north slope of the Greater Caucasus called Shatili, which has a 12th century fortress made from stones without mortar holding them together (and is only a few miles from the Russian border/Chechnya). It is rather remarkable that they are still in good shape after so long of time in harsh mountain conditions. The drive up to Shatili was beautiful and, although it was only about 120 km (roughly 75 miles), it took about 4 hours to get there due to the amount of switchbacks and the terrible condition of the roads, with many streams actually running over the road (apparently it is one of the most spectacular roads in the world, according to this website). Despite the lengthy car ride, we had a great time with Irakli and Nino and had a nice picnic near the river (See photos when I post the link). Shatili is in the region of Khevsureti, which I talked about some last year in my posts because they still have pagan rituals where they sacrifice animals. Unfortunately, we did not witness any of this, but one interesting part of this region is that their dialect of Georgian is very similar to the Georgian language that was spoken in the middle ages. They are also known for their folk songs from this time period. It is a very isolated area, as we had to drive over a pass that was 2676m (8780 ft) in elevation. There was some snow and it was nice and cool; a great escape from the Tbilisi heat.

Another new place for me that I have been meaning to go the last few years was the Ethnographic Museum in Tbilisi. It is a very large park that has many traditional buildings from different regions of Georgia that were disassembled, transported to Tbilisi, and rebuilt. They are mostly from between 100-200 years old and were built without nails. They are put together much like a puzzle and I would be very interested to see one of these being constructed. (Katie's blog has pictures, since I didn't take very many here). We also hiked up  to the Svaneti tower, which gave us a nice view of our area of Tbilisi and Turtle Lake. It was here that I saw my first wild animal in Georgia, besides birds and lizards. We went into ruins of one of the older buildings and found a tortoise, which I later identified to be a spur-thighed tortoise. It was pretty cool, and of course I picked it up to help liberate it from running into the wall of the house.

We also made a trip to the site and I was able to show Katie all of the great things that Dmanisi has to offer, including a nice place by the river for swimming and relaxing. We had fun hanging out with many of the other researchers, smoking Shisha (Hookah) from Kuwait, and drinking brandy and chacha, including a very harsh apple chacha that Jimi made. It tasted like apple gasoline and I'm pretty sure it burned a hole in my esophagus. In any case, it was a fun night of conversation.

I think Katie had a good time here and am very happy I could finally share my experiences with her. It also gave us a little vacation together before we are apart for the next month and a half.

But now that she's gone, the real work starts. I worked in the museum for much of the day yesterday and was hoping to go in today but I was not able to get in. It was probably for the best as I was out late last night with some Georgian friends. It was a fun night and not working allowed me time to write this post and hopefully work on some other things (and to watch The Beach, which is one of my favorite movies).

My work in the museum is again focused on bones and entering them into our database so I can eventually map them. I am also working on a couple papers, one of which we will be submitting to be published sometime in the near future. I have plenty to work on this summer and hopefully I will be able to get to all of it. I will be on my own for a few weeks until my adviser arrives, so I can get a lot done in my downtime.

I will be going to the site sometime this week to help excavate, so I will probably report back after that.

Stay tuned until next time.

Nakhvamdis,

Reed

PS. Pictures are up on Facebook (there used to be a link that I could share with everyone, even those without FB, so everyone can see the photos, but the ever changing FB apparently got rid of that. Sorry)