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