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