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THE METALLIC kiss-sha of the screens echoed across the site. Nel pulled her field book out to plot the next transect. Four rows labeled A-D and 12 columns number 1-12 comprised the grid. It was an archaeological version of battleship — drop a meter square unit and cross your fingers for diagnostic artifacts.
She pulled Mikey aside. “Keep an eye on Shiloh, she seems a bit overconfident.”
Nel stopped by George's screen. “You finding anything?”
George propped the screen on one knee, boot planted on the growing mound of dirt underneath, a land-locked Captain Morgan. He opened his hand to show her a nice collection of flakes. “10 chert, 6 of this other stuff.”
“Good job. You said you wanted to ask me something?”
He grimaced. “Yeah.” He flicked the dirt from the screen before leading her back to his unit. Nel climbed into it, brow furrowed. The soil was dry and dense, the color of perfectly made coffee. “What’s up?”
“I think I screwed up.” The boy pointed to the thick black band that slashed diagonally through the neat stripes of color. “The color’s all wrong. I think I dragged my boot across it.”
Nel grinned. “George, that wasn’t you. Looks like a burrow.”
“How do you mean?”
“You know stratigraphy, the stripes in the dirt?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re not just any old color. They get lighter the further you go because you’re getting farther from organic stuff and closer to crumbled rock. The black-red fluff that has leaves and stuff, that’s organics. After that, you have a mixture of that stuff and whatever's further down. The deepest we go is the next layer, which is sand or bedrock, maybe silt if it’s a flood deposit, or sometimes clay. That stripe is from some animal digging a burrow and taking organics down with it. Tracking in the mud, you could say.” She scraped the offending color with her trowel. “See how it goes in, it’s not just a scuff mark.”
He grinned. “Thanks! I got worried I screwed up everything.”
“We can usually tell when something is from diggers or other people like looters or construction. The stripes are all mixed together, the top’s the wrong texture, and half the time they leave ciggs and coins and trash underneath everything. The colors are kind of how we determine rough eras too.” She rose with a groan. “Keep going down for another level or two, but if you don't find anything else we’ll call this one quits.”
She paused at the camp table and flipped through the finds pages for that day. “There’s precious little here, Mikey.”
“I know. I think we’re just not deep enough though. That biface frag they pulled from the embankment was pretty deep.”
“A17 and 19 are almost on top of C. If they start going deeper than that we’ll have a whole ‘nother set of issues.” Her eyes narrowed. “Maybe I should drop a China trench.”
Mikey snorted. “The noobies always love that.”
Nel’s first dig had dug a unit until they hit the bedrock to get a better idea of the soil composition and color. The students had joked that they were digging to China, and the name stuck. She pulled the maps out and unrolled the one already sporting a dozen hand-drawn corrections. “Where do you think would be best?”
Mikey leaned on the table, blunt finger tracing the semi-circle of positive units. “Maybe at the peak of this arc here. Like a few meters off, between Grid A and the line of shovel tests you wanted to put in.”
Nel nodded and began collecting the necessary paper work. “You want to do a walk over, see what we can find?”
“Sure thing.” He dumped his pack and grabbed a water bottle and the camera. “Be back in a bit.”
Nel hummed an answer, already elbow deep in the opening notes of the unit paperwork. She loved mapping, but the other paperwork was something that twisted in her gut like a knife. Why did I ever want to be a teacher? All it involves is paperwork. Finally she tapped it into order.
She found the center of A Grid and hooked her tape on a corner nail before pacing out 10m. She could see outcroppings of bedrock in the hills and behind her, so the China trench wouldn’t last too long, she hoped. She slipped in her earbuds and flicked on her walkman. Mikey teased her for being a hipster, but the truth was her Zune was more durable than any iPod. She cranked the volume, head bobbing to “Holy Horseshit Batman” as she laid in the unit. One gnarled finger held the tapes down where they crossed at 100 and 141cm. And I thought I’d never use geometry. She tapped in the second corner nail that held the string outlining the unit.
Mikey’s hand on her shoulder startled an entirely too high yelp from her throat. She jerked the headphones out and whirled to glare at him. “Was I singing again?”
He snorted. “Not loud enough to bother anyone. I like Gym Class Heroes, though, so I didn’t rightly mind.” He jerked his head behind him. “I’ve got something for you to see.”
“Let me finish this?”
“Yeah, it’s not going anywhere.” He crouched and held one end of the tape, watching as her eyes inspected the shape for tiny imperfections before she dropped the last nail. “It’s crazy how this becomes second nature, eh?”
“Yeah, something that seemed so foreign and complex is like breathing.” She tied off the bright pink string that denoted the boundary of the unit before rising with a groan. “Oi, Annie!” she called across the site. “Keep an eye for a second, gotta check something.” She followed Mikey to the crest of the hill. “They probably think we’re hooking up.”
Mikey made a face. “I doubt they think that. I’m pretty sure George just figured out you were female.”
“Kind of,” she joked. “What did you find?”
“We did the walk-over in the middle of the growing season, there were a shit-ton of plants, remember?”
“Yeah we could barely get through half the site without a machete.”
“Well I think I found something the bushes were hiding.” He paused at the crest of the hill and pointed. A line of brown-pink boulders marched away from them, straight and orderly. Another line arced away at an angle, like a narrow funnel. Nel’s eyes narrowed. “Huh. Old river bed?”
“Look at the stones. Half of them are scoria.”
“Did you take pictures?”
“A few. Feel free to take more. You want to map it in?”
“Yeah, and drop a transect down the middle. See what it looks like under there.”
“You think it’s cultural?”
“I think it could be.” She scuffed at the dirt with her boot, glaring through the sun at Mikey’s find. “I also think I’m artifact-starved and would label your fresh shit in the bushes proof of occupation.”
Mikey laughed softly. “Alright, well let’s get China started and we can map this tomorrow.”
“I take it the total station is fucking up again?” She nodded to the piece of survey equipment that seemed to cause more problems than it solved. When it worked, it allowed them to record the exact location of certain points.
He grimaced. “Yep. I’ve never had this much trouble with it before. Might be the ocean or the altitude or something.”
Nel flipped open her compass. “Yeah, I think my compass has sand in it. This site will be the death of our high budget if we keep fucking up our tools.” She glanced back to the site. Kat was finishing unit paperwork. Nel nodded toward him. “Get Kat started on China Trench, I’ll finish up this.”
She jogged over to the first line of rocks and snapped a picture before tugging her field book out of her pack and quickly sketching the boulders. There were twenty-seven of them, all between 1 and 2 m in size. Blood surged through her limbs. This was what archaeology was about. Leaving Africa, crossing Beringia, crossing the Atlanic, finding the Moon. And archaeologists searching for where we began. Nel paced out the lines, marking particularly interesting rocks as she passed.
Humans were explorers, right down to the base of whatever they called a soul.