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“LUNCH!” MIKEY’S SHOUT boomed across the site, followed by the clatter of shovels, trowels, and buckets hitting the ground. Nel finished mapping another rock before meandering back to the shade of the pop-up. She fumbled around the cooler, eyes still fixed on the map. Finally, she found a bottle and settled against one of the poles. The crew was quiet, excited chewing punctuated with the buzz of insects and tinny music played through a smart phone.
Nel took a heavy swig off her water bottle. Bitter juniper burst across her tongue and she gagged, whirling to spew the mouthful onto the ground behind her. “Fuck!” She peered closer at the cap of the bottle. She had scrawled a “G” onto the plastic with a permanent marker, but the ice had turned black into faint grey. She glanced up to see the crew staring at her, a mixture of concern and friendly contempt on their faces.
She grimaced. “That is the last damn time I’m reusing water bottles for gin. Three times now I’ve brought alcohol into the field.”
“Rookie mistake, Dr. Bently!” George’s banter broke the eager silence of eating.
Mikey leaned forward. “What’s everyone brought today?”
Some had brought left overs, others a simple sandwich. And some make rookie mistakes and bring fucking alcohol into the field instead of water. Nel took Mikey’s proffered bottle and swished the taste from her mouth.
Food was a constant subject. Morning topics would be the best lunches everyone had ever had. Lunch-time was for sharing and discussing supper. The afternoon’s food discussion would go between serious propositions for meals and blatant food-porn. Nel listened to the options for a few minutes while she wolfed down her salad.
“I want to try that little place on the corner again,” Annie said. “I saw something on their menu the other night but I’d already ordered.”
“We’ve been there twice this week. We could go next week,” Sally suggested.
“Next week is for El Cóndor and that’ll take half our per diem. Besides, they’ve got so much stuff, it’s not really like you’ll have to get the same thing.”
Nel cleared her throat. “I don’t suppose anyone would be interested in having a crew cook-out tonight. There’s a butcher in town that has great cuts and I make a mean jalapeno glazed chicken. We could all pitch in and make our best potluck stuff. I’ve got some spices in the kitchen for people to use.”
Her suggestion was met with groans of happiness and she grinned into her lunch. Mikey’s eyes narrowed on her with mock anger. Nel stuck her tongue out in response. She might not be the social crack that Mikey was, but she knew how to romance hungry diggers.
•
“OI, GOT SOMETHING FOR you to see.” Chad leaned on one leg of the pop-up tent.
Nel glanced up absently from organizing the buckets of artifacts and soil samples. “You find something?”
“No, still no artifacts, but we’re done profiling that unit and have the profiles from all the STPs lined up too. It’s interesting.”
Nel tossed a last bag into a bucket and dusted her hands off. “Have you taken anything for analysis yet?”
“No, thought you might have specifics about that.”
Nel followed him across the site to the unit he and Annie had dug on the ridge. It was 1m square and close to 80 cm deep. The soils were the usual three layers, save for the black band cutting through the B stratum. Nel crouched down and drew her trowel. The 3cm lens was compact, but composed of fine grains. She didn’t know what it was, but Mikey’s words rang in her ears. “Chad, call the rest of the crew over. We should talk about this as a group.”
When the others crowded around, Nel gestured to the unit. “What do you think, Annie?”
“Me?” Annie knelt carefully next to Nel. “I’m not sure it’s a stain—”
“Be confident.” Nel glanced over her shoulder. “If you truly think something, own it. Worst case, you’ll be wrong and learn something.”
Annie laughed softly. “I don’t think it’s a stain. The consistency is different from that above and below it. It’s like an alluvial deposit, but I’m not sure — but this isn’t the proper area for a flood. We’re too high and there’s a stream below that would be a more probable path for a flood. There’s also almost no bioturbation in this area, so I doubt a rodent or roots carried this down from the surface. Besides it’s too uniform for that to be the actual source.”
Nel sat back, a small chunk of the dark soil on her trowel. “Good. I agree.” She dumped the chunk into George’s hand. “Pass this around, feel it with your fingers, smell it — don’t eat it please, Henri — really look at it. Does it remind you of something you’ve seen before on another dig? Maybe you’ve seen something similar somewhere else, unrelated to archaeology.”
The dirt was passed around, most of the diggers examining it with clueless earnestness. Kat tilted her head at it thoughtfully “This looks like metal, you know?”
Nel glanced up. “What do you mean?”
“My dad has this grinder in his work shop, for metal and sharpening stuff, you know? This pile of metal filings collects under it and it looks like this.”
Nel clenched her jaw. Kat was observant, but her speech patterns grated against every nerve Nel had left. “Good, thanks.” She rose with a sigh. “Alright, everyone back to work.” She turned to Annie. “Annie, I want you to take a sample of this. You won’t want to contaminate it in anyway. They probably won’t do much protein analysis on it, but just to be safe we’ll be sterile.” She handed Annie a packet of sterile gloves and two plastic bags. “Wash your trowel with distilled water, over there, and wipe it down. Then scrape down very carefully until you have enough to fill that bag. We’ll record the location of your sample and send it out tomorrow morning.”
Nel plopped down with a sigh on one of the big rocks. The stone on metal grinders was silicate in nature, but most of the dust was from the metal itself. What were metal filings doing in the middle of intact geological strata?