July 18th

This week was back to the usual bagging and tagging of artifacts. However, Kevin asked for some help finding really cool artifacts that could be displayed in a case representing the 1995 Gibbs farm dig. It was really fun to dig through all of the boxes and try to find items that seemed like they would appeal to the public and still display a majority of the items found at the site.

Here is a picture of what the items look like after I have them sorted to and ready to be put into their individual bags:

That's the balloon!

So each item gets it's bag and you can see a few finished bags in the top center. Usually, I'll have about 10-40 of them lined up ready to be bagged for each lot. Because it can be so easy to mix up the artifacts and make a mess of the workstation, I meticulously arrange all of the bags on my left by size and line up the finished baggies on my right. I'll have to take a picture of the full work space and post it next week.

Here is a fork that I pulled aside for the display:

It had a wooden handle

I was really excited when I came across the fork. Lauren grabbed a bunch of other forks that were in the collection in order to see if there were any matches, sadly, this guy is all alone in the world of cutlery.

This is a button that Kevin really likes:

Hawkey!

This button is really cool because Kevin isn't quite sure what it is from. He believes it is non-military, but other than that, it's a total mystery. 

I really enjoy all of these pictures, so here is a random ugly harlequin quilt picture:

Gross

Lauren and I were really tired and out of it all day, so we slowly trudged through our projects and listened to music. Towards the end of the day, Kevin told us a few really weird and difficult riddles that involved midgets, dead people and eating pigeon. I ended up getting a lot done, but it wasn't a terribly eventful or insightful day other than finding good pieces of rock with mortar, a fork, a button, some glass, some pottery, some nails and other things that will be put into the case.

Lauren and I did talk for a while about our upcoming tour of the Science Museum on the 30th and what we thought of the various temporary exhibits. I'm really excited to talk to the curator and ask her about the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit and why she thinks it did so poorly, and ask her about the current Real Pirates! exhibit. I am really curious how the attendance for it has been because I absolutely loved it and think it was a fantastic blend of education, fun and artifacts. I'll probably have lots to say about the tour after the 30th. Hopefully I'll have some more pictures too!