Allergic to Cowboys

Jessica, Anna, and Christina here reporting from Taft College dormitory.









We've just resumed work after the first weekend. The site has two test pits going right now, one in a cave with cupules and pictographs and the other on a slope to the side of it. We've had some interesting materials coming from both, including some curious bones (bear tarsals? or another mammal--deer?) and a fragmented point. Test pit 1 is going well but has a plethora of large rocks. Test pit 2 has proved to be quite difficult because the dirt in the cave is very loose and slopes in from the northern wall, plus it's quite rocky already.

At the local Foursquare Church

There are cowboys on the property, too, because they have cows grazing the European grasses. Sometimes we see them as a cloud of dust in the distant hills--other times they sneak up on us.


We also had an exciting weekend. First of all, the sport camp portion of field school began on Saturday with some casual tennis matches while Fraser and Greg took up the running side of things. (We cooled down later in the afternoon with some spontaneous indoor wiffle ball, eventually followed by frisbee at Jessica's house.) We followed through on that on Sunday morning by watching the epic final match of Wimbledon on tv.



The crew spent most of the fourth at Jessica's house in Bakersfield. The highlights of the evening were tri-tip steak and fireworks in the driveway. We put on a show that got across the jist of the revolution through small fireworks: a British tank fired on a peaceful American fort, which retaliated with a piercing whistler firework and a few spinning things.

On Sunday the team leaders headed to LA for a rental car exchange. Jessica and Christina drove to Pismo, where we could drive the Vue right onto the beach (!) and then bask in the biting wind and admire the near-freezing water.

This week we're looking forward to finishing up the first two units and drawing the sections. After that we should be moving up to the higher plateau where a midden is visible, so we should have more artifacts to look forward to.