mmm, rain.
Oct. 25th, 2007 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateSo we stood around in the cold & drizzle for a couple hours, and then word came through that the media circus was still on, so we went in and started untarping the site and bailing out units, and then around 10 we got word that they'd finally talked sense into the PR people and called it off, so we put the tarps back and went home. Yay mud. And stuff. Fortunately it didn't pour on us while we were out there.
Word is it's supposed to keep raining through about saturday. With luck that'll be true, and we'll have tomorrow off as well. And I am not the only one who hates this project to death.
I've been meaning to talk about the following, should I get around to it:
thought 1) The problem with prehistorics is that it's all a bunch of broken rocks, and for the most part making it is a dead technology; there are people who knap, but the tradition is pretty discontinuous. So you go out in the field and look at a bunch of broken rocks, and you the non prehistorian would look at most of them and say "um, that's a rock." You can say for certain what is a clean or a weathered edge, and most people can be taught what a worked edge looks like, particularly if they spend a couple days playing with rocks and bottle bottoms learning the basics of knapping.
We have one tech, let's call him trowelbreaker, who has worked on several prehistoric sites, and has no idea what a worked edge looks like. However, he has the self-confidence that he'll make easy decisions based on his ignorance to say what is a flake or a tool or just shatter or nothing-throw-it-out. Or he'll take something he picks up to our resident expert and say "Is this a point?" when it's a triangular piece of shatter, which is to say, a rock that happened to break off in a pointy shape when the larger rock it used to be part of was hit once.
I have been working with this stuff for a while now, and I know some of what I'm looking for; I can recognize varous shapes of flake, even in quartz, which is about the worst material it's still possible to use for toolmaking. I know what a worked edge looks like; I've learned to recognize most scrapers (the ones on our site are usually more fan-shaped than wikipedia's picture... theirs is of a retouched flake anyway), and I've gotten past the stage of mistaking pretty flakes for points. I'm not so good on cores because I haven't looked at as many of them (and they're hard to see on quartz), and I know that there are a bunch of other things I probably haven't even heard of yet. So if I see something funny, I automatically either put it in the bag, or ask someone more knowledgeable if it's worth saving.
Our resident expert, imported for this project, has been working with prehistorics in some manner or another for upwards of 20 years. She hasn't done quartz before, since she comes from places where they've got real rocks (obsidian, chert/flint, rhyolite & agryllite) instead of this junky stuff, but she, in consultation with the field director, is the arbiter of what we keep or toss. Only... the terms in which what we keep or don't are defined keep changing, and I don't know if that means that the definitions are changing or not. But then she'll come up with something I would have put in the shatter bucket and say, "look at this cute little scraper that's worn down to nothing." And maybe it is a scraper, although if so it got resharpened until the scraping edge was flat instead of sloping, and then used until it didn't scrape any better than a rounded pebble. And at some point you have to wonder about the knowledge base, and where that comes from, and if our expert-- or the person who taught her-- is any better than trowelbreaker really, just asigning names to shapes somewhat at random. It's not as if we can ask the people who made these things.
thought 2) ...so, there's this doll, and pictures are finally up. I want the size (she's the first girl this large; the next biggest ones (unless you count the... I think it was seven life-size ones Volks did, which aren't commercially available anyway) are just under 70 cm; she's 79cm, which is about 31 inches;) she's the grown up for my little boy, and from the same manufacturer, so she'll look about right with him. And I've been waiting for them to release her for... how long now? Anyway, order period starts tomorrow.
I like her eyes, and her nose is ok from some angles. I think the only problem with her mouth is how they painted it, so that's fixable. But she's got that stupid square chin that Corbie has (the 2nd boy in that size) and I don't know that I'm quite ready to attack my dolls with sandpaper to make them different; it's kind of a scary idea to be taking sandpaper to my expensive dolls. Particularly without prior experience... And of course, goodness knows what the doll looks like on her own without the manufacturer's lighting and make-up. And eventually (judging from what they've done with Sabik, the first boy version) they'll do a limited edition cool cyber-version of her, and/or an elf, and then come out with other heads for the body mold, which might be nicer. So I could wait a year and have more options to pick from, and so long as I synch to the 5-days-a-month order cycle I expect to be able get her whenever I want.
Of course, despite the logical explanations and all that, I could have told you as soon as they announced that they were going to release her that I'll be getting her anyway. Apparently I'm dumb like that. Or have been spending far too much time around people who think it's reasonable to spend hundreds of dollars on a doll as often as you can afford to. Sigh... If she comes and I hate her, I guess I can sell her again.
There was a thought 3, but I can't remember what it was now.
ALSO... is anyone interested in doing a craft day Sunday afternoon?
Word is it's supposed to keep raining through about saturday. With luck that'll be true, and we'll have tomorrow off as well. And I am not the only one who hates this project to death.
I've been meaning to talk about the following, should I get around to it:
thought 1) The problem with prehistorics is that it's all a bunch of broken rocks, and for the most part making it is a dead technology; there are people who knap, but the tradition is pretty discontinuous. So you go out in the field and look at a bunch of broken rocks, and you the non prehistorian would look at most of them and say "um, that's a rock." You can say for certain what is a clean or a weathered edge, and most people can be taught what a worked edge looks like, particularly if they spend a couple days playing with rocks and bottle bottoms learning the basics of knapping.
We have one tech, let's call him trowelbreaker, who has worked on several prehistoric sites, and has no idea what a worked edge looks like. However, he has the self-confidence that he'll make easy decisions based on his ignorance to say what is a flake or a tool or just shatter or nothing-throw-it-out. Or he'll take something he picks up to our resident expert and say "Is this a point?" when it's a triangular piece of shatter, which is to say, a rock that happened to break off in a pointy shape when the larger rock it used to be part of was hit once.
I have been working with this stuff for a while now, and I know some of what I'm looking for; I can recognize varous shapes of flake, even in quartz, which is about the worst material it's still possible to use for toolmaking. I know what a worked edge looks like; I've learned to recognize most scrapers (the ones on our site are usually more fan-shaped than wikipedia's picture... theirs is of a retouched flake anyway), and I've gotten past the stage of mistaking pretty flakes for points. I'm not so good on cores because I haven't looked at as many of them (and they're hard to see on quartz), and I know that there are a bunch of other things I probably haven't even heard of yet. So if I see something funny, I automatically either put it in the bag, or ask someone more knowledgeable if it's worth saving.
Our resident expert, imported for this project, has been working with prehistorics in some manner or another for upwards of 20 years. She hasn't done quartz before, since she comes from places where they've got real rocks (obsidian, chert/flint, rhyolite & agryllite) instead of this junky stuff, but she, in consultation with the field director, is the arbiter of what we keep or toss. Only... the terms in which what we keep or don't are defined keep changing, and I don't know if that means that the definitions are changing or not. But then she'll come up with something I would have put in the shatter bucket and say, "look at this cute little scraper that's worn down to nothing." And maybe it is a scraper, although if so it got resharpened until the scraping edge was flat instead of sloping, and then used until it didn't scrape any better than a rounded pebble. And at some point you have to wonder about the knowledge base, and where that comes from, and if our expert-- or the person who taught her-- is any better than trowelbreaker really, just asigning names to shapes somewhat at random. It's not as if we can ask the people who made these things.
thought 2) ...so, there's this doll, and pictures are finally up. I want the size (she's the first girl this large; the next biggest ones (unless you count the... I think it was seven life-size ones Volks did, which aren't commercially available anyway) are just under 70 cm; she's 79cm, which is about 31 inches;) she's the grown up for my little boy, and from the same manufacturer, so she'll look about right with him. And I've been waiting for them to release her for... how long now? Anyway, order period starts tomorrow.
I like her eyes, and her nose is ok from some angles. I think the only problem with her mouth is how they painted it, so that's fixable. But she's got that stupid square chin that Corbie has (the 2nd boy in that size) and I don't know that I'm quite ready to attack my dolls with sandpaper to make them different; it's kind of a scary idea to be taking sandpaper to my expensive dolls. Particularly without prior experience... And of course, goodness knows what the doll looks like on her own without the manufacturer's lighting and make-up. And eventually (judging from what they've done with Sabik, the first boy version) they'll do a limited edition cool cyber-version of her, and/or an elf, and then come out with other heads for the body mold, which might be nicer. So I could wait a year and have more options to pick from, and so long as I synch to the 5-days-a-month order cycle I expect to be able get her whenever I want.
Of course, despite the logical explanations and all that, I could have told you as soon as they announced that they were going to release her that I'll be getting her anyway. Apparently I'm dumb like that. Or have been spending far too much time around people who think it's reasonable to spend hundreds of dollars on a doll as often as you can afford to. Sigh... If she comes and I hate her, I guess I can sell her again.
There was a thought 3, but I can't remember what it was now.
ALSO... is anyone interested in doing a craft day Sunday afternoon?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 07:10 pm (UTC)We shall see...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-25 07:43 pm (UTC)Depends on weather, etc.