Back to the Sand… Again

We are back in Oman once again.  This year we have some of the same people and some newbies.  Dr. Krista Lewis is still in charge & of course Brian & I are still here.  Dr. Sarah Graff & her daughter, Anastasia, have also returned but we lost Dr. Lamya Khalidi, which is very sad--we miss her already.  Lamya had other commitments this year and couldn't join us.

We gained four students this season, three from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock & one from Arizona State University.  Suzanne Crouch graduated from UALR last year while Devin Sorrows & Deanna Holdcraft are finishing up their Senior years.  Rebecca Harkness is a Junior at ASU.  

The crew… from left to right: Ganem, Anastasia, 3 Italian's (they work at Khor Rori), Sarah, me, Deanna, Devin, Brian, Rebecca, & Sue.  Krista took the photo.

We spent the first few days getting organized and acclimating to the heat & the time zone.  We did manage to make it to Khor Rori, another local site, that is a favorite of ours.  The beach is amazing and so is the archaeology. ;-)

Brian chasing crabs on the beach in Khor Rori.

If you followed us last year you know that we did an Indiegogo campaign to raise money for supplies.  We did quite well thanks to you and managed to buy a pile of supplies for this season.  

One of the most important things we purchased are cloth bags for gathering artifacts.  Last year we had to use plastic, not only are they not recyclable but they also sweat or trap in the moisture when it starts raining.  We have 100 large & 100 small cloth bags that we can use again and again since we have pretty “clean” dirt here at Al Baleed.

The other major purchase was an iPad for the students to use.  That put us up to seven iPads!  Four of those are for inside use only--Brian, Sarah & I all have our personal ones for use inside the lab.  Brian works on the database, Sarah uses hers for Ceramic Analysis and I use mine for all the Lab data entry.  The fourth one is an old iPad that we use as the “library” it has a few books, documents, dictionaries, etc for the students to read in their spare time.  The other three iPads are in the field every day.  Krista has her personal one, the new one from Indigogo & Sarah’s University (ASU) helped her purchase one for student use as well.  We are forgoing almost all paper & using iPads for all forms, notes, etc.

The iPads all work together & the info is all shared & saved due to a database. This database is a major undertaking--the entire thing has been created by Krista, Brian & Kevin Geiss (who is back in the States--big shout out to Kevin!)  They started with FileMaker Pro software & designed everything for our archaeological use.  Major brain power needed to make all this work!

Along with the bags & iPad we also purchased things like tape measures, line levels, folding rulers, Lifeproof cases for the iPads (to keep out sand & water), photo scales, special plastic bags (that don’t harm the artifacts for packing & storage), labels for tagging artifacts, flagging tape, string, and a few other odds & ends that keep a dig running.  

One last super cool thing Brian found is called Hoodi--it's the blue thing in the picture above.  It attaches to the iPads to block the glare when taking photos or just using the iPads in the field.  There is also a gray one in the back of the other photo.  The combo of the Hoodi, the anti-glare screen protectors and the Lifeproof cases all make it much easier to use the iPads here on the very, very, sunny Tropic of Cancer.

We've been digging for one week now.  The students are getting the hang of things in the field and the lay of the land here in Salalah.  We've already found a few cool artifacts, some interesting walls, and we've managed to start training 15 workers... but that's for another post.