Data Day!

Today was a day.

I ran out of adjectives.

Today was day two of formal field work, and it was very much like day one. We got up nice and early to be ready to go by 8, but inevitably ended up leaving a good deal later. That’s not to say, though, that we didn’t get anything done because of the late start. Our group found the solid six hours more than enough time to take quite a few points throughout the valley, and today we were a lot more efficient because we had a little experience and divided up the tasks more evenly. My field notes, though still something of a mess like yesterday, were at least consistent in the information presented, and somewhat consistent in the order in which it was presented. We made it our business to take on the eastern, sea-side end of the valley, which ended up involving some traipsing through muddy cattle tracks, and a few mud-like cattle excrements by accident. But in all of our traipsing we also accidentally discovered one of the old tunnels through which they ran water pipes to make use of the water from the mountain aquifers. Unfortunately, without a flashlight, further information about it, or time, we couldn’t explore any farther in than the first few feet, but it’s certainly something to come back to when time permits.

That same corner of the valley proved to be a goldmine after we also accidentally stumbled upon a sort of hollow in the rock face that bore marks potentially significant to the archaeology group. The hollow was behind a tangled mess of trees and dead vegetation, but I managed to climb up and take some photos of the charred appearance of the stones around it, so that the archaeology people might be able to investigate if it was some sort of oven or fireplace, or if it’s just some sort of geologic feature.

Besides that, not much really happened today. We continued taking points, this time straying off of our planning maps for areas to which we hadn’t dedicated enough attention, and when we got back we loaded the data onto the computers off of the Trimbles and saw it on a map for the first time. It was a pleasant surprise to see how accurate the points were, even matching up perfectly to building corners when we overlaid them on the Worldview imagery. Though our data are rather boring, I’m excited to see the results of other groups that had more variation, like lines and polygons rather than just points. I think I understand a little better now the benefits that will come from having all this data collected already, because I couldn’t imagine trying to figure it out individually for our projects later.

Even with the not-super-eventful day, I’ve still managed to get sleepy, so goodnight!

Our beautiful little points!