Today was a somewhat uneventful day. Or as uneventful as it can be examining human remains in Butrint, Albania. We awoke and ate breakfast eagerly, because the 3 burials left at the forum were promised to our group to dig, as I had already dug I was simply going to be cleaning and analyzing bones while they went digging and hopefully reviewing enough to remind myself of what I'm actually doing. It's so odd, I remember stuff but then I can't explain it. Or I know I should remember something but I don't. I hate being ill prepared.
On the way to class we passed by what would end up being the highlight of our day, a flock of sheep being herded down the road and onto the small “ferry” that crosses the river. I say ferry loosely because it is really just a raft that is run across the river by a line and powered back and forth. All in all it probably takes less than 7 minutes to be moved from one side of the river to another. The sheep were very unhappy to be moved and protested and tried to run away quite a lot.
Sadly, we got word that the excavations were being done by the people already there and that none of us was to help. Apparently they had not only left the burials exposed to the rain storm but had also broken one by dropping part of its stone covering on top of the bones. My classmates and I were sorely disappointed and I know that Sarah and I felt bad because we had gotten to do a full day's excavation at the exclusion of the others. So we went and received a lecture as we tried to secure the remains that were from previous years that might be from both the helenistic and bronze age. We couldn't find much of those either.
After lunch we split into groups to receive a lecture on aging and sexing bones or to analyze the 2 very young skeletons we had waiting in our office. I decided to stay and help with the analysis. This turned out to be a bad idea. I was paired with Sarai, who is a difficult person to work with. She is very loudly opinionated and judgmental and really is only out to help herself. I sat down with my computer to help her take notes and was told that she was taking her own notes and didn't really need me. I helped her anyways and it was a slow and tedious process as we counted each individual bone fragment and attempted to side them. We aged the child at around 5 or 6, the little girl had her first molars growing but had yet to lose any baby teeth. All in all it was a rather unpleasant day.
After dinner we received a lecture on DMORT and their help with 9/11. It was incredible to hear from a person who had been on the scene, doing the hard work and helping the people receive identities and their families given some semblance of peace. The way he spoke made it sound like work that I would want to do. I can't say I'd really like it, because no one should like a mass fatality and recovery effort but I would feel pleased with myself by helping out in this way if my skills permit.
I also received my first odd bug bite. Don't get my wrong I've got a fair share of mosquitoes but this bug obviously had pincers and left what looks like a small vampire bite on my hip. It also hurt and was rather large. Didn't get to see too much of it though, as I flung it away quite quickly.
Did I also forget to mention that the Livia, the hotel we're staying at, has bunnies? As in, wild bunnies who live on the grounds and hop around us all the time? Because it totally does and some of them are young bunnies and all are adorable. No touching of course, they probably all have mange or something.
Looking forward to another day with bones!
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