After a rather sleepless night, I was not feeling well at all we woke up and went to breakfast where we were informed that only 2 students would accompany the professor to the dig site and excavate the remains. Most people did not volunteer but around 6 of us were feeling highly competitive over those 2 coveted spots. I ended up winning the second of the 2 spots and eagerly awaited the excavation.
We followed the ethnobotanist on the site to the site, which involved climbing over the walls of the theater. This was bad because the guards for the park were very angry and whistled at us to get down off of the ruins. I was last in line because I moved slowly and so in fear I jumped down quite a distance to the bottom of the ruins and ended up spraining my ankle again. I had sprained it almost 2 years ago and it had never quite healed properly. It was fortunate that I brought my compression sock with my to the site as I ended up putting it on as soon as we got there.
It took a while to get everything sorted out but eventually Sarah and I were cleaning and excavating fill so that pictures could be taken. We had to remove a few bones but altogether leave the skeleton in-situ in the grave. It was definitely a child's body, most of the long bones were un-fused and the vertebra were mostly fused. The skull was a mess, having either exploded from moisture or crushed because it was in many pieces. The grave had obviously been disturbed at some point, by a rodent, root or something else we weren't sure what had caused all the movements because roots were present and rodent activity was evident. It took us until lunch to fully clean the remains and have them ready to be photographed and then drawn, which happened after lunch. We were worried a bit because of the fact that they bones had been moist in the soil but were exposed to direct sunlight and would dry out fast, making them easily crumble if handled without care. Fortunately when we finally did excavate the bones remained intact.
At first glance it had appeared as though most of the bones were broken, except for the femurs and innominates, it looked like everything else was in pieces but after further excavation we found a mandible and most of the ribs intact. We even found a biforcated rib, which is a nice find. We bagged everything as best as we could, trying to keep the sides separate to help us out later on when we needed to analyze and sort them. The artist on site helped us do all of the excavating and was quite excited. Sarah and I were both happy because it was our first excavation and I think we did quite well. Transporting the bones up to where the rest of the class was for cleaning and analysis ended up being quite interesting. Generally we would have brought them up in a crate but there were none so I moved things around in my backpack and we put all the bags in there. Sadly because my ankle was in such bad shape I had to walk the long path to the top where the museum was, rather than take the stairs. The path was actually quite creepy and I didn't enjoy my trek but I made it in one piece and we were able to lay out the bones on a table so they could dry from the condensation that had formed in the bags from the heat.
Cleaning was definitely needed but at that time there was no space so we decided to clean the bones the next day. All in all today was rough on my body but very rewarding to see that our work was not for nothing, as we removed the child and will now be studying him or her to see what they have to say.
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