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)

Long Tuesday

Gamarjobat!

 As I write this, I am now eclipsing the 24 hours awake mark from when I woke up in Tbilisi to go to the airport, which was 1:45 AM local time. Currently, I am cruising at 400mph 30,000 feet above sea level. I have slept as much as three hours, sporadically, including a nice nap on a bench in the Munich Airport (Flughafen Munchen for you Deutsch speakers), and through the last half of Tommy Boy on the trans-Atlantic flight from Munich to Newark, NJ. So it should prove to be an enjoyable blog post, what with my insomnia infused rambling and all. Ha.

 My last week in Georgia was definitely a great one. When I last had updated everyone, I was heading to the site to look at the bones that just came out of the ground and to escape the stifling Tbilisi heat, which was hanging between 97-99 degrees for the last week. We showed up at night and had some laughs around the table, playing some cards and drinking some ludi. I woke up the next day, ready to start working on some of the bones that had come out, so I went in to the lab to scan the bones and see where I wanted to start. It took about thirty seconds for me to spot a small, conspicuous looking vertebra, which I knew immediately to be human.  It was a great start to the morning and along with some other great finds (human) it turned into a great day.

And any great find does not go unrewarded. We were eating dinner when our good friend from past years, Giorgi, showed up to visit everyone, mainly his wife, and celebrate his birthday. We also learned at dinner that we would be having a second dinner of mtswadi (skewered pork) and wine to celebrate our great finds. We did indeed have a celebration, of Giorgi’s birthday, of our finds, and of our great team. I stayed up long enough to see the 20 liters of wine disappear and to sing many of our favorite Georgian drinking songs, which are mostly not Georgian, but are just fun to sing. I was the only American to make it to 11PM and stayed up late with dozens of Georgians. It was so much fun. I am obviously not fluent in Georgian, but I am getting better at understanding words and figuring out what everyone is talking about. I still am lost most of the time, but Nika, Giorgi, and Teona are all nice enough to translate for me. Maestro was our tamada for the night and did an excellent job. Many a gaumarjos’ later, I was in bed and ready to face the bakhmelia I was sure to have the following day. We looked at more bones that day and I stopped at bone number 1000 for the year. It was an awesome trip to cap off a relatively monotonous, although very productive, year. We said our goodbyes to everyone at the site and headed back to Tbilisi for the weekend.  We spent more time at the museum wrapping things up and looking at some more bones, as well as looking at all of the rhino teeth and aging them. It seems we have maybe a dozen rhinos at the very least, which is really cool to see. We had a few more meals and received more wine from Sergio, which I hope is still in its bottle and not all over my luggage.

 It was another great year in Georgia, and I know I am going to miss it. I got to explore new areas of the country and really take in the breathtaking beauty of the country I am beginning to think of as my second home. I have added another couple dozen words to my vocabulary, which include left and right (martskena da mardjvena) and I understand (gavige). Hopefully I will remember them and perhaps spend a little more time learning more words before I go back next year. This is one of the first years where I am certain that I will be going back next year, so I am a little less sad to leave than I have been in years past.

 Only a little while left on the plane, and I couldn’t be more excited to be done with this August 14^th, of which I will see probably 30 hours of. Ugh, and I’ll have been awake for most of it. Oh well, it’s the journey not the destination, right? I’m not so sure.

Thanks for following the blog this year, and I will be sure to post in the fall or winter if anything big comes up. I hope you enjoyed my ranting and raving and rambling and run-on sentences as much as I have enjoyed recapping my events.

Nakhvamdis until next year!

Reed

Home Stretch

Gamarjobat,

Only one week left in Georgia. As year three comes to a close, we are inching closer towards a completed database. I am approaching the 1000 bone mark.  To put that in perspective, that is roughly 10% of the collection, which is growing bigger everyday. To put our collection in perspective, I was recently reading about the La Brea tar pits and their excavations, and they have over 3.3 million bones. Our task seems a lot less daunting after reading that. I have looked at many interesting bones, from all different species (even Paleotragus, which is a short-necked giraffe that we have very few of so far but the numbers are growing).

This year has been very different then the past two years. By next week, I will have spend only 1 week at the site and have yet to touch a trowel, although I did use a brush to clean a few bones. I feel really dissociated from the excavations this year, which is really no surprise, considering our time spent in Tbilisi. As much as I enjoy the city, I really miss the solace of the countryside. Dmanisi, as different as it is from America, really does remind me of home. The simplicity of the countryside (and the silence, of course) has a soothing effect on my psyche, probably because I spent so many days in the stillness of the forest and so many nights staring into the vastness of space during my tenure in Balsam. And it was as desolate as that sounds. Ha. I do owe much of who I am to where I grew up and am happy to find that other places in the world are not so different.

Anyways, we have had a pretty productive week. We went to Dmanisi for a night and saw some of the new test pits, M12 and M13, the latter of which didn't pan out. We will be heading out tomorrow afternoon and staying until either Thursday night or Friday morning. The lab workers are out there already prepping the bones and removing the sediment, so we will have plenty to look at for a few days. The field school has also kicked off and the students are all really nice. It will be fun to spend a few days and get to know everyone better. We will come back and work over the weekend and then mentally prepare for our long journey back to the States.

I had a good time this weekend at the market and looking at all of the odd and interesting things for sale. I could have bought hundreds of Soviet medals or a large painting of Josef Stalin or any number of random electronics, but I refrained. I did buy some nice skewers so I can make so shasklik when i get home, and so we have nice skewers instead of the weak and small bamboo ones that we currently have. I also bought some gifts and enjoyed the selection of art that was available.

Well, bed time is drawing near and my eyelids are getting heavy so I will leave you with a shorter post this week.

Tune in next week for my final thoughts.

Nakhvamdis,

Reed

Aaaauuuggghhhh, vertebrae!!!

Gamarjobat,

Tbilisi is hot as ever but we are still plugging away at the museum. Unfortunately our AC units are on the fritz and only work for about 5 minutes before blowing out hot air, but they go back to blowing cold after several minutes off. Oh, the first world problems I have.

We were in Dmanisi over the weekend and got to see some of the new areas of excavation as well as some of the new finds. M11 is now approaching the basalt and they have come upon a bone bed that has yielded dozens of bones so far, and they just uncovered the tip of it. A large skull is sticking out as well as a few carnivore mandibles and many other various bones. We may go down there for a day or two in the next few days to see the progress. The field school starts on Monday so we may go then to meet the students and stress the need for them to excavate carefully and not to damage the bones, because it makes our job of examining the bones that much harder, since the more marks on the bone that are new obscure the ancient bone modifications, like cut marks and gnaw marks. Anyways, it should be an interesting visit.

Our time at the site over the weekend was fun. I went for a hike with Reid's two students and we hiked to the highest mountain behind the dighouse. I estimate the elevation to be somewhere around 5000 feet or so, or about 2000 feet above where we started from. That is a complete estimation and I will check to see if I can find a more accurate measurement. We hiked up in about four hours, through acres of raspberry bushes and other various thorned plants. My legs have cuts and scrapes everywhere, as I chose to wear shorts. Most of the raspberries were not ripe yet either, but I survived. We found a large sheep skull and a badger skull too. We had some lunch on the way back down, which consisted of bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, and plums, all of which are staples in Georgian picnics. Our walk back down took a little over an hour and we got to take in some great views of the southern Caucasus and the site. Some snow was visible on the higher peaks in the south, but that was a little more ambitious of a hike.

I took part in the excavation a little on Monday before we left, as I helped screen the sediment, looking for the smaller bones and stones that the excavators may have missed. I also spent some time in the lab cleaning sediment off the bones. It was just nice to be out of the Tbilisi heat and pollution for a few days.

Reid came back from a trip to Shatili on Sunday, which is a town near the Chechen border in Khevsureti, a region in northeast Georgia (click the link to read more about this awesome region). It is a very mountainous region and they have very different customs then the rest of Georgia. Reid was saying that they were leaving the day of a large Pagan ritual, which are commonplace in this region, as much of the people still practice these ancient Pagan customs. Each village has a shrine, which is usually an enclosure with several smaller enclosures within, each smaller enclosure being a different shrine in which only certain people, usually different levels of shamans, can enter. These rituals are still driven with animal sacrifice and the offering of blood to the Pagan gods. Apparently, as I learned a little last year from some linguists who had been studying these regions and rituals, the shamans in the villages have been slowly dying off and the younger generations are not taking part in the ceremonies as much. Therefore, entrance to some of the shrines is no longer possible because these 'high-ranking' shamans are gone. They still need to make offerings in these forbidden shrines, so they take the blood and soak a snowball in it, then heave the snowball into the shrines that they cannot enter. This appeases the gods and life is good in the Pagan world. Reid said he saw into one of the shrines and there were dozens of large skulls of bulls and mountain sheep and goats, all in various stages of decay. He also said that Jesus is a key part of one of the myths about there gods, in which he wrestles one of the gods and loses, thus leaving the region and spreading his word elsewhere (although they later incorporate some of the Georgian Orthodox religion). It is fascinating that these rituals are still in areas of the world and have changed very little over hundreds if not thousands of years. Anyways, it was an interesting story and especially so because Reid is a great storyteller.

Back to the present, I am fully immersed in vertebrae at the museum. I have been teaching myself the subtle differences between all the families of mammal and have been looking at and sorting hundreds of vertebrae. I have finished the cervical vertebrae (the ones in the neck) and am about halfway done with the thoracic verts (those that ribs are attached to). It has been daunting but I am making a lot of progress. I knew I have been looking at them too much when I had a dream about sorting vertebrae last night. Now I can't escape my work, in the real world or the dream world. Alas, the life of a zooarchaeologist. Back at it tomorrow and hopefully approach finishing one aspect of the assemblage before we leave, which is only two and a half weeks from now!

Time has been flying, but I'm still plugging away,

I hope you enjoyed my rambling and wish me luck with my vertebrae.

Nakhvamdis,

Reed

Fun with Stalin

Gamarjobat!

Reality has finally set in here in Tbilisi. Mid 90s and steamy. Well, the cool weather was nice while it lasted. Luckily we have portable AC units at the museum so I can blow cool air on myself all day while I am working.

Besides the warmer weather, things in Tbilisi are great. We have been making more progress on the assemblage and have found more hominin cut marks. We said goodbye to Katrina last week and will say it again to Sean tomorrow night. It sure will be quiet next week. Things are going to start to get a little busier though, as the excavations are coming down on some bone beds. We will probably go out to Dmanisi this weekend and check the status of everything and stay for a few days. The field school will start in two weeks and we will be going back and forth a bit more once bones start coming out of the ground. In a new area of the excavation, M11, they have recovered some very big vessels, or pots, which were used for storage and some were used for cooking bread. They are about 3 feet tall and maybe 18 inches in diameter at the greatest point. These vessels are Medieval and are much later in time than the bone beds, which are almost two million years old (1.85-1.77 my to be precise). I am excited to see this new area and examine the bones that are ready to come out.

Today we made a trip to Gori, which is about an hour west of Tbilisi. Gori is home to the Stalin museum and birthplace, as well as a number of interesting archaeological sites. It was also one of the cities hit the hardest during the war in 2008, but they have rebuilt most buildings and we saw no evidence of the bombings in the town itself. There was an area just outside of the down where some large oil drums were damaged. On the drive to Gori there are are a few places that have rows and rows of small houses for refugees of South Ossetia, the autonomous region of Georgia that is currently occupied by Russia. It was a pretty drive to Gori, as we had a good view of the northern Caucasus.

The Stalin museum was interesting in that it was built in the early 1950s when Stalin was still alive and the exhibits are the same as they were when the museum opened. It is a museum which preserves these exhibits as is to show the Soviet propaganda and the praise of Stalin from the Communist era. We had a tour guide to take us around, as everything was in either Russian or Georgian. Stalin was born in a one room duplex in Gori, which is still preserved and at the museum site. His given name was Iosef Jughashvili, which loosely translates to 'child of Jugha.' Shvili is a common ending to Georgian last names, that and 'idze,' 'adze,' and 'iani,' among others. There were many great paintings and tapestries of Stalin and a hall of gifts given to him by foreign diplomats, most of which were of Communist persuasion. Also on site was his train car, which he used to travel about. It was not as gaudy of a vehicle as I was expecting, but gaudy and flashy was never really the Soviet way, was it? Anyways, the museum was quite interesting and I took many great photos, which I will share a link to below. And I saw Stalin's death mask, which is a mold made of his face minutes after he died and then recast in bronze.

After the museum, we drove to Uplistsikhe (which, yes, is as impossible to say as it looks). We got a brief glimpse of the Gori fortress which rises tall over the city, but no opportunity for a photo, which is why it is linked to the wonderful and all knowing wikipedia page, although it doesn't do it justice.

Uplistsikhe is an archaeological site carved out of the sandstone bluffs on the outskirts of Gori, on the banks of the Mtkvari River, the same one that flows through Tbilisi. It was carved in the 3rd millennium BC, or roughly 5000 years ago, and shows intermittent occupation of various groups of people throughout history. The original founders were said to be pagans, then Christians, when Georgian Orthodox began to sweep through Georgia in the early centuries AD, ca. 300-400 AD. A citadel now sits on top of the site, built in around the 9th or 10th century. The caves and structures were quite amazing and had several different uses, some being storage and some being living. It was especially windy on top of the hill, as in upwards of 50mph winds, which were blowing the sand everywhere, including at me and sandblasting my skin. Besides witnessing Aeolian processes firsthand, I had a great time exploring the hand carved caves and structures, as well as chasing lizards, of which I saw three... Well, four if you count the dead one on the foot path. Nah, let's just say three. :)

It was another fun trip to an area of Georgia that I had not seen in my three visits. Hopefully I will be able to see a few more places before I leave in a month. Time sure is flying, but I am having fun, as I wouldn't want to disprove that old adage.

I hope everyone is surviving the heat back home and elsewhere, as I am beginning to feel your pain.

A link to pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.599876582213.2052639.185200036&type=3&l=a3b7d85344

Nahkvamdis,

Reed

Super Supra

Gamarjobat!

Another week has gone by and things are still great in Georgia, including the weather! I am amazed at how nice it has been and I sure hope it stays this way all summer so we can tolerate working in the museum and really putting a dent in our research. We have gotten a lot done so far and are really starting to increase our counts of carnivore gnawed bones and hominin cut marks, of which we have about a half a dozen new bones so far. Not a lot, but definitely interesting to see how much the humans had accumulated in this vast assemblage.

Over the weekend we took the trip to Dmanisi and stayed for the night. Martha, Julia, and I came back on Sunday while the other two students stayed to experience the excavations and the exciting life in the field at Dmanisi. They found out really quickly how boring it can get at the site when there is no one else around. Many of the Georgians that were excavating in the previous years are excavating elsewhere so it is very quiet at Dmanisi, even more so than normal. It was fun to go back to the site and see what they had done since I left last year. They had taken down one wall of the excavation and uncovered a lot more of the basalt as well as a fully articulated juvenile deer torso, including almost all of its ribs and vertebrae. There were many more bones sticking out of various places so it will be exciting to see what is uncovered this season. In M5, Reid's excavation, they have started to bring down a few squares to the basalt and will come down on top of what we think is a carnivore den, since nearly all of the dozens of bones that have come out of that feature are gnawed on by carnivores, and we found baby hyena teeth, which is usually seen in their dens. We have only uncovered a small part of that feature so I am especially excited for that part of the summer.

Reid's students arrived on Friday night (at 5PM somehow, instead of the 3AM that I always arrive). One was here last year and the other was here for the first time. We bought a few beers at Lamara's 'night club' in Dmanisi (just a small shop with a small cooler of beer and other necessities), and we went to the top of one of the hills behind the dig house and took in the beautiful vista and enjoyed our cold ones. It was a pretty fun night and we found some wine in the refrigerator and tried it. It was rough but we had a few glasses, seemed like a good idea at the time. Who knows how long that wine was in the fridge, and I think everyone felt a little sick the next day, some more than others. Regardless, the night was fun and we went back on Sunday afternoon.

On Tuesday, there was a party at Dmanisi for the US ambassador, who is leaving Georgia. He has been out to the site at least once each year that I have been here so I knew who he was and had met him a few times. We had a supra, or large feast, and enjoyed some fine Georgian food and drink, sans chacha, but heavy on the Mtswadi, which was too my liking. There were probably 60 people at the dig house, mostly people from the US embassy. I rode out in a van with two paleoanthropologists; Ian Tattersall from the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, and Jeffrey Schwartz from the University of Pittsburgh. We chatted a little and learned that they were going to be working in the museum for the next few days looking at the hominins. We took advantage of the hominin bones being out of the safe and got a chance to look at various parts of the 5 individuals uncovered from Dmanisi, including their clavicles (collar bones), humeri (upper arm bones), skulls, and mandibles. It was pretty cool to see the real bones, as I had seen the skulls many times teaching Anth 1001 at the U of M. We only saw three of the skulls, as the one from 2005 has yet to be published on and was unavailable and I'm not sure why they were not looking at the toothless individual (luckily I had seen the big beautiful skull from 2005 two years ago, still waiting on the publication, coming to a peer reviewed journal near you). It was interesting to also hear Tattersall and Schwartz's opinion on the variation between the specimens. (For those who want to geek out about what provocative things they said about the specimens, I will elaborate more once I get back to the department :) ).

We went to dinner with these two gentlemen and were talking about some of the collections at the Museum in NYC, and this prompted me to say that I read "Dinosaurs in the Attic" by Douglas Preston, which is about how some of the collections at the museum were accumulated. Ian Tattersall then said that he knew 'Doug' and remembers that he was researching about the collections and referred me to another book that was previously written in the 1930s on the same topic. I successfully held back my urge to gush about Douglas Preston and how much I liked his books and that I had read almost all of them. Maybe when I see him again. ha. So I now by association know Douglas Preston and Michael Crichton, the latter because Philip Rightmire went to Harvard with him in the late 1960s. They happen to be two of my favorite authors.

Back to dinner: We had a lot of food and some great conversation about paleoanthropology and our ancestors and some great gossip about some of the big names. ha. That was probably the best part! No, it was all very interesting. Towards the end of dinner, the restaurant we were at had live traditional Georgian dancing and singing, which was really cool to see in person. We stayed for a few dances and called it a night. Here is a link to the dancing: it is unbelievably cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWJiXAfPEcI

One of the other students is leaving tonight, so our crew will be reduced to 4, and the other student is leaving next week. We have been looking at so many bones with this bigger group so our production will drop off pretty quickly once they are gone. We have a lot of summer though, and I am confident that we will get a lot more done than we anticipated in the outset, especially if the weather continues to be tolerable.

I am not sure when we are going out to Dmanisi again, but I expect it to be when the field school starts in a couple of weeks.

I will post more pics soon.

Thanks for reading!

Nakhvamdis

Reed

Gamarjobat!

Everything is great in Georgia, including the weather. As everyone is sweltering at home, we have been enjoying beautiful 70s weather with occasional rainstorms. If any one remembers my previous blogs, this is completely atypical of weather in Tbilisi and it should be as hot as it is in the states. I am happy to delay that part of Georgia for a little longer but it looks like it will begin to heat up at the end of this week.

Our museum work is going well, and I've looked at almost 200 bones already, so I have gotten a lot done in my first week. We have many more carnivore chewed bones and are on a three day streak of finding human made cut marks! Since we only have a dozen that we have seen so far in our 5000+ bones that we looked at, it is especially exciting.

Over the weekend, we took a day trip to Kazbegi, which is now called Stephansminda, and a Georgian town close to the Russian border and in the middle of the Greater Caucasus mountain range. It was about 32 degrees there and rainy/snowy. Unfortunately we only had a brief glimpse of Mount Kazbek's peak, which is just over 16500 feet in elevation. The clouds were hanging very low, but that was a beautiful sight in itself. Our drive there was really beautiful and we went through a mountain pass that was 7200 feet. Our journey north ended at Gargeti Trinity, which is a beautiful church perched on the edge of a mountain facing Mount Kazbek. We did not spend much time on top since it was so cold and rainy. We drove down the mountain a little ways and found a nice place to picnic. Irakli had packed some pomidori, kitri, puri, atame, kveli, da ghwino (tomato, cucumber, break, peaches, cheese, and wine... See, I know some words). It was a nice 'picnic' out of the back of Irakli's jeep and we headed back to Tbilisi. I was happy to get to see Kazbegi as I had wanted to for the past two years. I am not satisfied yet, however, and hope to go back on a clear and sunny day.

On Monday, we explored some other parts of Tbilisi that I had not seen before. There is a new park in Old town that is near the walking bridge and a new gondola that takes you from the park up to the fortress near Mother Georgia. It was only 1 lari (~60 cents) to go up top and we walked through the botanical garden behind the mountain on our way back down. There is also a 100 or so foot waterfall behind the fortress and in the botanical garden, which was a complete surprise to me. We then stopped and had a beer with a few Germans that were accompanying us, one a botanist that was looking at the pollen from Dmanisi, and the other was a documentary film maker. They were both very nice and had good stories to tell.

We will be heading to Dmanisi just for the day on Saturday, just so one of the new students can see it before she leaves. I will probably be spending more time at the site later in the summer, as the field school starts at the end of July. The field school is a bit small this year and is run through the University of Zurich in Switzerland. There are two American students and two Georgian students. Many other people will be arriving later in the season as well.

We have been spoiled this year with internet in the apartment, so I will try to update my blog more frequently, since I have no excuse to not do it. I also have been able to watch Netflix, which makes my nights a lot less boring.

Also, I have posted pictures of my weekend trip and some other things, so feel free to check them out at the link below.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.599876582213.2052639.185200036&type=1&l=a3b7d85344

I have this grand idea of making an online photo collection through a website other than Facebook, but I have not started it yet. I will post the link if and when it is ready.

I hope everyone is keeping cool in the States. Happy 4th of July!

Nakhvamdis!

Reed

Gamarjobat,

I arrived safely in Tbilisi after a long trip from Minnesota. I had a short layover in Chicago followed by a long layover in Munich. We landed at about 3:05AM local time. My flights were pretty uneventful, although they switched planes for my flight from Chicago to Munich to a smaller plane, so I didn't have a seat until after half the people had already boarded. I received my ticket eventually and was happily surprised when I realized that I was bumped up to Economy Plus, which was rich with leg room and, somehow on this full flight, no one was seated nex to me on the one side. It was very nice.

I took the train into the city when I got to Munich and went to a paleontology museum that boasted a large collection of saber toothed cats and mammoths. I got there and there was one big room with about 20 skeletons of different animals and a second floor balcony with some information on early humans and some replica casts of their skulls. Needless to say, I didn't kill as much time as I was hoping at this place and was a little disappointed that I had to walk quite a ways for this place. So, after 15 minutes in the museum, I began to explore Munich on foot a little bit. I walked a couple miles and looked at some areas that we didn't get a chance to explore last year, so I had a good time. I also had a delicious Bratwurst. I spent a couple hours in the city and decideed to head back to the airport to find a bench to nap, which I did.

Irakli and Martha greeted me at the airport when I (and my luggage) arrived. I went to the museum and worked for a little while yesterday and actually didn't feel too jet lagged. It is really nice to see so many familiar faces again this year. We will be working at the museum until next week, then we will take a trip down to Dmanisi to see the site, as the other two students have not been there yet. Reid's excavation of M5 will start next week as well.

Our apartment is in a nice location, about a half a block from where we were last year. It is a two bedroom and 1.5 bath, but the living room and dining room are quite large so we are not too squished with five people.

Not much else is going on here yet, but I will keep posting as we have internet in our apartment this year.

Also, the Twins were on tv here last night for some reason, but I'm not complaining.

Nakhvamdis,

Reed

სად მიდიხარ? (Sad midikhar?)

Gamarjobut, perhaps for the last time from Georgia. As my title translates to 'Where are you going?' I feel that I have been asking myself this question a lot lately. This summer's field work in Georgia closes a chapter of my life that I don't plan to forget. I have met so many great people and have had the opportunity to share memories and conversations with great minds around the globe. The Dmanisi team is more than a group of people in the same field working together. It may start that way but after these last two years, I feel like I am part of the family that they have here. A family that is willing to talk out their obvious differences, put their heads together and figure out problems, and share tons of laughs over a few glasses of beer, or chacha. Of all of these, it is the latter that I will miss the most. It is so refreshing to be in the field with out tv or internet (well there was some this year) and have so much time on your hands to play games and get to know everyone.

Anyways, as the field season rolls on for everyone else, I made my departure from Dmanisi yesterday. I took the museum bus with the field school students and we first went to the oldest domed church in Georgia, Jvari Monastery, which was built in the 6th century. We then when to the town below, Mtskheta, which used to be the capital of Georgia, until it moved to Tbilisi in the 10th or 11th century. It was a beautiful area in the mountains and it was actually nice and cool, instead of 100 degrees. We ate at a lobio (bean) restaurant on our way out, and had a spread of food in the amount of which I had never seen before. Plates of food were stacked on other plates of food and even more food was coming out. I ate to capacity, or perhaps a little over my capacity as I was rendered immobile for much of the afternoon. It was worth it. Kebabis, khachapuri, khinkhali, sulguni, lobio, and ludi were all present as as much as I could ask for during my last meal with everyone.

Rewinding a bit to last week's festivities. We had a welcome arrival from Spain during the week, and he brought a lot of stories and fun that was a continuation from last year. I have not laughed that hard at stories for a long time as Mark and Jordi, both Spanish, spoke of their previous years at Dmanisi, including many stories about other foreigners drinking too much to the delight of all of the Georgians, and everyone else who got to watch the events transpire. Then on Thursday, we said goodbye to Jordi, and there is no proper send off than a few glasses of chacha, and many a 'Goumarjos!' I stayed up until 4 chatting until we figured out that it was 4, since we apparently lost all concept of time, and had a rough next day. Luckily, I just got to stay at camp and enter bone data into my computer, but the electricity went out so I barely got started. Even luckier for me, I could nap off my bakhmelia before dinner. It was a good night overall. On Friday night was the party of the year, at least until the end of the field school, as it was August 5th and Dato's birthday. I tried to have a better night of it than last year, which ended poorly for me but probably well for everyone else as they could laugh at my expense. Anyways, I won't get into last year because really, why dwell on the past? And I don't really want to tell that story to everyone :) SO, this year. Started off pretty well. Adam, Zach, and I had a pretty funny conversation before dinner speaking on many different topics. Some new words were invented, to which hilarity ensued. Again, I won't elaborate but will chuckle to myself as I write :) Khachapuri was served this year, which I don't think we had last year, and the main event, shashlik, or mtsvadi, soon followed. Shasklik is salted pork that is skewered and cooked over wood coals and water is thrown on the coals to make lots of smoke to give it a good smoky flavor. the first few pieces I had were dry and I was panicking, thinking that I missed THIS for a whole year. Luckily, the following batches were deliciously moist and heavenly. Mmmmmmm. I may have to eat some tonight somewhere. The rest of Dato's party went pretty well, considering Zach and I didn't embarrass ourselves in front ot Dato again, or at least get an eye roll or an awkward handshake. The night ended with some stargazing and many shooting stars, as this weekend was the beginning of a meteor shower. Many great stories, a conversation in Spanish with Mark, some cigarette smoking (numbers 4, 5, and 6 in my life), and learning more Georgian curse words filled the space in between.

As for the work in the field, everything seems to be moving accordingly. No hominin bones yet, but there are two weeks left and many missing skeletal elements. Many cool animal bones have come out that I got to look at, which is exciting, including a fox mandible (which may be the first at Dmanisi), a bear mandible, quite a few pelvises, and a huge rhino humerus that had the deltoid tuberosity gnawed off of it. In the same square as the rhino and the gnawed pelvises, Martha found some hyena teeth in the sediment collected from there, so we may have a small area of M5 that was a hyena den. Pretty cool stuff. Lots of bones again this year, and not enough time to see them all.

Now I am back in Tbilisi and fly out on Wednesday at 4AM, with Mark also on that flight, on his way to Spain. That will help kill some of the time at the airport. I plan to spend the next few days looking for things to buy, or just walking around. It is nice and cool in Tbilisi again today, which is nice.

Yesterday when Julia and I caught a taxi back to the apartment, it was raining as it had been almost all day. I said,"I can't believe it's raining in Tbilisi," as it has only 3 times over the last two years I've been here. To this Julia responds, "It's because Georgia is crying because it will miss you so much." I hope that's the truth because I know how much I will miss this country, the people, the language, and the new family that I feel like I am a part of.

I can not express how much I hope this blog continues in the future, but for now I must say Nakhvamdis and leave you with a pleasant goodnight saying.

ტკბილი ძილი და კეთილი ანგელოზები (T'kbili dzili da ketili angelozebi)

"Sweet dreams and kind angels" (Madlobt Sopo!)

Thanks again for following my blog and I will post pictures when I get back to the States. The question I address at the beginning is far from being answered so stay tuned for more adventures, hopefully some that will contain a Leopard sighting.

Nakhvamdis.

Reed

ლუდი არ არის ცუდი (Beer is not bad)

'Ludi ar aris ts'udi' is the transliteration of this post's title. As you can see, this fitting phrase for a refreshing beverage on a hot day also has a nice ring to it. It also was one of the many new actual sentences I have been taught over the course of the last week at Dmanisi. Also, helpful phrases like 'where are you going?' and 'Go!' have now been added to my Georgian vocabulary. I really wish I could speak it and understand more of it because I would really like to ask questions to the people in the village that are also on the excavations. None of them speak English, or are limited to 'Thank you' and 'Hello,' which isn't too much different than my level of Georgian. It would also be nice to hear what the others are talking about in the camp. It is amazing how much fun they have at the camp and how much they smile and laugh at all hours of the day. Although I don't understand most of what their saying (I say most because once in a while someone will translate for me), I can't help but smile and laugh along. Which may be ironic because my current facial hair situation may be the butt of their jokes. Ha. But I digress...

The last week has been pretty fun but exhausting. We arrived in Dmanisi last Saturday to some newly uncovered bones in M5, which I got to partially dig out at the end of the day, since Reid had to pay the workers and there was no one else there. It turns out that that square produced about a dozen bones, including a bear mandible and a rhino humerus. Pretty cool stuff. There are also two pelvis halves in the ground that should come out this week. Getting there Saturday also meant overlapping time with one of the field school students from last year. He was leaving on Monday so Saturday night we drank up the Chacha that Sergio gave me and about a third of a bottle of vodka. Not too much, but enough for bakhmelia the next morning. (You can figure that one out I'm sure. :) )

We had only planned to stay until Monday, but as I was getting prepared to catch the Marshutka (small bus) back to Tbilisi, we decided that it would be better for me to stay behind while Martha and Julia went back. I was happy with this since it was nice and cool in Dmanisi and I would get to excavate. I was hoping to work in the square with the bones, but since I am not so experienced with taking fragile bones out of the ground, I was assigned to a different square. I was fine with that and started to go to town with the rock hammer. At Dmanisi, the sediment is so hard that a rock hammer is really the only way to get through it. Some layers are basically cemented together and they are taken out by Hilti, our resident jackhammer. I usually have no trouble moving dirt, as I have had a lot of practice in my teenage years (Thanks Dad!) so I was going back in time at a pretty good rate. After about 30 centimeters down into my square, and about 3 or 4 meters below the actual ground surface, I reached the line that separates the two different types of sediment. The line is indicative of a magnetic reversal on Earth, which has happened dozens of times over the last couple million years. This reversal means that the magnetic north of the planet had actually switched from the north pole to the south pole, and these reversals have very reliable dates based on a dating technique called Paleo-magnetism. This concept is way over my head to explain any further so I hope you got the gist of it. Anyways, this line basically means that I had reached 1.78 million year old sediment. These sediments from this line and downward to the basalt, which is 1.85 million years old, were all ash layers from volcanic eruptions and are the reason that a lot of the bone preserved so well, because they were buried right after they were deposited.

So, before I had reached this line, I found a pebble or two. Nothing very exciting for a day and a half of swinging a rock hammer into the dirt. After the line, my luck didn't get much better. I found one unidentifiable bone fragment that crumbled if touched and a few cobbles, or larger stones. Finally on Thursday I found an artifact, which was a nice piece of stone that had flakes taken out of it, which could be from early humans flint knapping, or making stone tools. On Friday, I reached a lower sediment and found 6 artifacts in the same 10 centimeter layer. Pretty exciting stuff. Of course after things start heating up, the day ends and I was summoned back to Tbilisi.

I knew that my time excavating wouldn't last very long, but it was fun while it lasted, and the physical toll it took on me did not go unnoticed. Maybe that's why people weren't going as fast as I was, but I'm leaning more towards the fact that I didn't find much. On Saturday we washed artifacts and I had a break where I went to the site and met Martha and Dr. Bernard Wood, who is a professor of Anthropology at George Washington University in DC and one of the big names in Paleoanthropology... and my roommate for the next few days. Ha. Martha gave a tour to a bunch of people from the US embassy who knew very little about the site and even less about archaeology and they were apparently pressed for time because the tour took about half the time it was supposed to.

Sunday was when the field school students arrived, which consists of 10 Americans, all girls, and 3 Georgians, two boys and one girl. Adam, the field school instructor and a professor at Wellesly in Boston, and Zach, the field school assistant, also arrived then and it was nice to see both of them again this year. We ate dinner with them at the camp and then took the museum bus back to Tbilisi, with Zaza driving, who has been driving for the museum for a long time, and we arrived in about half the time it normally takes that trip. ha. It was really bumpy. That's all I have to say about that.

I was summoned back to Tbilisi to look at more bones in the Museum, which are all fragments of limb bones. We are taking measurements of the angles of the breaks and are going to compare them with the previous measurements we took on the elk bones that I broke last fall and compare them also with other papers. We are planning on writing a paper on bone breakage this fall and submitting it to a journal of some sort. This paper will be a chance for us to publish our experimental data, some of our field data, and some of our problems with methodology and inconsistencies in the previous studies. It should be a fun paper to work on and a meaningful first publication. We spent most of the day measuring bones today and will tomorrow as well, until we have to go to Dmanisi for Dr. Wood's lecture, and then come back tomorrow night.

It's pretty hot in Tbilisi and I miss the scenery at Dmanisi already.

Another long winded entry but I hope you enjoyed it.

I will write again sometime soon.

Nakhvamdis

Reed

თბილისში (in Tbilisi)

Gamarjobat!

I am glad to be writing again from Georgia. It has been a pretty relaxing first few days of assimilating myself back into the culture. Mostly that means tuning out the non-stop honking of horns on the streets outside of our apartment at all hours of the day. Ha. More relaxing as it sounds since it is done while lounging around the apartment.

Our apartment this year is a little bit further from the museum and other things than last year, but it is still nice. We have a fifth floor apartment and I only took the elevator the first day, hoping that I can at least match the 15 pounds I lost last year (and found since then, ha). We also have about a mile extra of a walk. Not too bad so far, but I'm not looking forward to when it gets in the high 90s and I start sweating as soon as I step out of our air conditioned apartment.

Anyways, the flight here was pretty uneventful, except for a little turbulence and it was completely packed. Lucky for me, I got to the airport early enough and got moved to an exit row seat so I didn't have to have my luggage in my lap. That was pretty amazing, since my knees always touch the seat in front of me in the other seats. Hopefully I will have similar luck on the way home, although I doubt it will be as packed. At least I hope not.

My goals of the first day were not realized as I woke up at noon after arriving at 4AM, started my laundry, went to the store to get some food for lunch, and had to wait like 2 hours for the washer to finish. After that, I put my clothes out on the balcony to dry and realized that the air conditioner was dripping on our other balcony for days probably and there was about a half inch of standing water since there was no drainage hole for some reason. Being the pragmatist that I am, I vowed to do the apartment a solid and remedy the problem. With a trusty role of duct tape I found, I went to work. I tape it to the wall and it was just long enough to reach over the edge of the balcony and drip on the cars below. haha. Better than seeping into our living room. After this, a storm was brewing so I had to hang my boxers from the coat rack and my other clothes in the bedroom closet. Thus, my nightly excursion was put on hold. And boy did it storm.

Martha and Julia arrived at around 4AM the next day and woke me up with the doorbell, since they didn't have a key. Their flight was fine as well. We went to the museum yesterday and today to see lots of people that I met last year and socialize and get updated on the gossip. All is well in Georgia at the moment. Nothing much has changed since last year, except a few new faces in the form of babies, including Irakli's, our driver from last year. He also has a great new job, but he will not be driving for us, which is unfortunate but I am happy for him. We also saw his father, Sergio, who is the museum mechanic, and he made me take a shot of brandy. It's like I never left. People all seem to remember me, or at least pretend to, so that is very welcoming.

I am very excited to get to the site. Under the skulls from last year were some elephant bones including a fully articulated foot that is in the museum. It is really cool and big. We found part of an elephant humerus right by there last year so hopefully there is more of the skeleton laying around. We are trying to find a driver to take us there tomorrow, so we will see.

Most importantly: I have uploaded pictures! Follow the link below.


http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.552645054573.2044918.185200036&l=ca2e28f760

I will try to write again soon.

Nakhvamdis!

Reed

Castles and Pizza

Hello again from Munich!

The trip has flown by and I am in the lobby patiently awaiting the shuttle to the airport and passing time by drinking some delicious hell (light/lager) beer and updating my blog.

This trip was many things: fun, exhausting, infuriating (only for a short period), to name a few. But it can probably be characterized by one of two things. You guessed it, just what the title says. We saw a few castles, but none as exravagant as the one we toured - Neuschwanstein. This castle is everything I thought it was going to be and more. It was crazy big, and built precariously on the top of a mountain. It was the grand idea of "mad" King Ludwig, who was declared mad shortly before his suspicious death because of his love for spending money. An odd symptom for diagnosis, yes, but that was the case then. The castle was started in 1869 and stopped in 1886 when King Ludwig died, to which the circumstances of his death remain unclear, but the common theory is that he drowned himself in a lake not far from the castle, shortly after drowning the doctor who diagnosed him as mentally ill. The circumstances are eerie simply because King Ludwig was an excellent swimmer and it was very unlikely that he would be able to drown himself. Anyways, dead or not, the castle remains, and he only lived in it for 6 months over a 2 year period. The castle was not completely finished because, when the king died, he was in so much debt (somewhere in the ballpark of how much the castle is worth today, and he was still building four castles at the time) that they stopped construction and it was turned into a museum some six months after he died. What is in the castle is original, including a bed that's canopy is wood carvings of gothic spires and cathedrals throughout Europe, a room dedicated to swans based on one of Wagner's operas, a giant ballroom/ concert hall (which now has concerts once a year and the roof literally shakes from the acoustics), and a man made cave that links his study with his chambers or some thing like that. irregardless of the connected rooms, he has a freaking cave on the fourth floor of the castle, with stalactites, stalagmites, and all. No bats though. Speaking of bats, and on a tangent, I went to the zoo today and they have a bat house where they just have it open and the bats are flying around your head in the dark. I got buzzed by a few of them.

Anyways, the castle was really cool, and I'll post pics in Georgia, since I can't here because the internet is really slow. There was also another castle on another hill by this one, called Hohenschwangau I think, and it was really cool too. We didn't tour it, but it looked awesome from up on the castle. There was also a trail up into the mountains behind the castle, and it had a really narrow foot bridge which Ryan dared not go on, as it crossed a gorge and was a couple hundred feet up, right above a river and a string of waterfalls. I can see why this castle was the ispiration for Cinderella's castle at Walt Disney World.

The second thing that defined this half of the trip was pizza. Ryan discovered Neopolitan style pizza for the first time, and we ate it quite a bit. At least three nights, but I bet we would have ate it every night if it was his choice. We did eat at some good restaurants in Budapest, and here in Munich. I hate sauerkraut but I decided to try it out over here. I like sauerkraut here, it was so sweet and delicious that I ate a giant plate of it. If only I had known this at the end of the year department party. Maybe I would have a different view of the choice in ordering 50 pounds of sauerkraut. Ha. Back to the pizza... Ryan ordered the same pizza everytime too. It was called Pizza Diavolo, which was cheese, hot peppers, and a spicy salami. I think Ry might put money down for his own Punch Pizza restaurant when he gets back to the states (For those who don't know, Punch Pizza is a chain that specializes in brick oven Neopolitan style pizzas. It's good, but it's not the pizza here, that's for sure.)

We have done a lot of walking over this trip and I am ready to relax my first day in Georgia, although I plan on waking up and getting some Khachapuri and then probably feast on some Shashlik at night. Mmmmmmm... I think I said what those were in my older blogs, so y'all should be up to speed. If not, it's a great excuse to go reread all my blog posts. Ha :)

Anyways, we saw some great things, some awful things (especially at the House of Terror in Budapest, which is about the Nazis and Secret Police in Hungary and the ensuing massacres of the Jews, and Dachau outside of Munich, which was one of the first concentration camps), ate some great food, and survived without strangling each other, although we had some close calls. Now I remember what it was like living with Ryan, haha. No, it was a great trip and our over-reactions can probably be attributed to our hunger (don't say anything Katie).

This was a long one, and I hope you enjoyed it.

Bye from Munich and I'll write next from Georgia.

Nakhvamdis!

Reed

ps. same spellcheck problem so don't be too harsh on my spelling :)

First Days in Europe

Guten Tag!

We arrived safe and sound with a few uneventful flights and are now in Vienna, Austria and are heading to Budapest, Hungary in the morning.

Ryan and I met in Amsterdam and got to Munich around 11AM, got our car, a nice little Kia six speed, and went to our hotel. We tried to check in but we were early so we grabbed a bite to eat and some beer to kill some time. I fully immersed Ryan into unfamiliarity as soon as I could by choosing a tiny hole in the wall bar where no English was spoken. I ordered us a few beers and we tried to decipher the menu, and eventually order. The food was good, I had some hot dog like sausages and Ry had a currywurst. We went back to the hotel and tried to check in again, and they couldn't find our reservation. That was because there were two hotels of the same name and we were at the other one. Luckily, the other hotel was only a mile or so away, and we checked in and took about a 4 hour nap, as neither of us really slept on the plane.

After waking up from our hard earned naps, we walked around our neighborhood, which was near the river that runs through Munich, which at this time the name escapes me. We walked along the river and then found a traditional Beer hall to dine at, called Wirthaus or something like that. I had some pork chops and a potato dumpling, which was delicious, and Ry had some Knodel, or dumplings, which were also very good. All in all, a pretty good first day.

We both woke up on Sunday at about 6, got ready, ate a large breakfast, and hit the road to Vienna. We decided to take the scenic route and avoid tollways so it took us about 4 and a half hours to get there, although the GPS told us it would take 6 and a half. Our first 70 miles or so in Germany were on the highway, also called the Autobahn :) Since I was driving, I decided to try and keep up with traffic a little bit, but even at 160 km/h people were still flying by us, so I kept it at a cool 140 km/h... For those who want to know how fast that is, you can do the math, since I don't want my mother to worry about it. haha. After we got off the highway, we went through a lot of small and beautiful towns in the rolling hills. We saw some mountains in the distance but they were further to the south and we should drive through them on our way back through Austria in a couple days.

Vienna is a really cool city with so much interesting history. We walked around in the rain yesterday to a large Versailles like complex called Belvedere. They had an art museum in one of the buildings and we saw some cool paintings and sculptures. This place was about 1/50 the size of Versailles and another place here that we saw called Schonnbrunn, but it was still pretty cool. We also went to a cool church, called Kritzkirche I think. We took a lift up to the dome and then some stairs to the very top of the dome and saw a panoramic of the city, which helped us to orient ourselves a little better.

Today, we saw the palace of the Habsburgs, the royal family that ruled for centuries, the natural history museum, a bunch of churches and other places of interest. Later we are going to walk around some markets by our hotel and go to a music museum. It was cloudy this morning but luckily it didn't rain much and eventually cleared up. It's pretty cool here, probably in the 60s.

Tomorrow we are off to Budapest and I hope to update y'all further in a few days. I am getting excited to see the mountains in Austria and to get back to Georgia.

I will post some pictures in the near future.

Auf Weidersehen!

Reed

ps. Apparently my spellcheck for this is in German so forgive any spelling errors :)

Field Season

Gamarjobat,

That time of year is upon us once again: Travel time. I will be leaving next week for the second summer in a row, back to Georgia for a month. My time there is about half of what it was last year, but we should get a lot more done since our work will be more directed without all of the mess that we had to deal with at the museum last year with the new cabinets and organizing. Apparently the museum will finally be open this year too, since it has been in a remodeling stage for quite a few years. That should be cool to get to see the exhibits.

My travel plans are a bit different this year, as I will not be meeting up with Katie in France. I will, however, be traveling around Europe with my brother, Ryan, for 10 days before I go to Georgia. We are meeting in Munich (that's our flight destination but I think we actually share the same flight from Amsterdam to Munich) and we will stay the first night there. We haven't figured out the exact itinerary yet, but we rented a car and are planning on driving straight to Budapest, Hungary the second day and staying for a few nights. From there, we will drive to Vienna, Austria and look around the city for a day or two. We then plan on going to Salzburg, Hallstatt, and Innsbruck in Austria before heading back to Munich, making a stop at the Neuschwanstein castle on the way. I am excited for the driving again, as it is a great way to see the countryside. We debated just taking trains, but it will probably be cheaper for this short of time to get a car and not have to lose so much time waiting for trains. Plus it is super fun to drive in Europe, and hopefully Ryan's GPS will guide us successfully.

I am currently writing my Master's thesis and am hoping to get a good portion of the initial background and methods done before I get to Georgia, as those are the main sections that I will need all of these books that I got from the library, and I don't intend on bringing those with me. The analysis of our data will mainly take place after I come back, since we will be adding a lot more to the database, and that is where the bulk of the work comes from. It is going well so far and, barring any unforeseen catastrophe, I should be right on schedule to finish in September or October. My defense will be a little tricky since my adviser will still be in Georgia, and my other committee member will be in the United Kingdom, but people have done it like that before. Keep your fingers crossed.

I'm not sure how much sightseeing I'll actually get to do in Georgia this year, since we have a lot of work to do, but I should have one or two days a week where I can explore, since the museum is not open everyday. I would love to be able to see the Northern Caucasus this year, but we may not have enough time. With that in mind, the elusive Persian Leopard may go unseen once again, but I will keep a diligent eye out for them. Perhaps a jackal will just have to suffice.

I will try to write a little more this year, but I won't make any promises since our schedule is usually unpredictable.

Nakhvamdis,

Reed

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