archaeology lab
Mar. 31st, 2005 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseHad my first lab section in archaeology this morning. Dear sweet gods, I love this class. It's kind of review (I've done way too much reading, and have taken a few classes that touched on all this), but there's just something wonderful about getting to class and having nothing to do in section but fill out a little sheet and play with replicas of early stone tools.
My favorites were the obsidian hand-axes (they feel wonderfully solid and powerful in the hand, and I've always loved obsidian, anyway), the delicate little points with beautiful chipping to give them serrated edges, and the absolutely tiny core and blades that I nearly missed - made of some almost-translucent pinkish-grey stone, the core looked like a little sugar cone (for size comparison, it was about as tall as the first knuckle of my thumb, and slightly wider at the base), with a little plastic baggy of the blades flaked from it. These blades were unbelievable - same length as the core was tall, but so thin, and they looked like they could have been absolutely vicious. I'm thinking perhaps they were used to head small arrows, but I'm totally not sure about that.
More reading for thesis, today, and then Comparative Family Organization (whee!) followed by work. I think I amused/surprised my professor, last time I had this class, by not only offering an example of something she was talking about when she asked (there are very few non-majors in the class), but providing the example from traditional Viking-era Scandinavia. Yeah, I knew other examples... but everybody and their cousin talks about Native American tribes in anthropology, and I figure it's my job to throw in a different perspective. ;)
My favorites were the obsidian hand-axes (they feel wonderfully solid and powerful in the hand, and I've always loved obsidian, anyway), the delicate little points with beautiful chipping to give them serrated edges, and the absolutely tiny core and blades that I nearly missed - made of some almost-translucent pinkish-grey stone, the core looked like a little sugar cone (for size comparison, it was about as tall as the first knuckle of my thumb, and slightly wider at the base), with a little plastic baggy of the blades flaked from it. These blades were unbelievable - same length as the core was tall, but so thin, and they looked like they could have been absolutely vicious. I'm thinking perhaps they were used to head small arrows, but I'm totally not sure about that.
More reading for thesis, today, and then Comparative Family Organization (whee!) followed by work. I think I amused/surprised my professor, last time I had this class, by not only offering an example of something she was talking about when she asked (there are very few non-majors in the class), but providing the example from traditional Viking-era Scandinavia. Yeah, I knew other examples... but everybody and their cousin talks about Native American tribes in anthropology, and I figure it's my job to throw in a different perspective. ;)
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Date: 2005-03-31 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 12:17 am (UTC)