Yoga and dropping acid

I have resumed my early morning yoga practice in the experimental house. I start at 5:30am, which has been painful given the low temperatures in the morning. But starting the day with yoga is just the best ever! By the time I sit down in my lab or go up on site, I am wide awake and I feel good. Everyone else is on their second or third cup of caffeine, with heavy eyes and dragging their feet- then there is me bouncing around, wide awake. I thought I would have the practice all to myself but Basak (human bones specialist) has asked if she could join me. I said I started at 5:30, thinking this would be a deterrent. But her little head appeared in the door of the house when I was in my first downward dog. She knows very little of yoga so I've become her teacher, which is a very strange twist. Basak giggles, falls down and asks me lots of questions, which is exactly what I used to do with Mitch. Now I know why Mitch was so annoyed with me! It has been good and she is learning. We sat down together with the sheet of poses and she wrote down my instructions in Turkish so she would not have to ask me anymore. We practiced together this morning, mostly in silence, until we both fell over giggling. Some of the poses are just so difficult and we don't have either the strength or flexibility to perform a fraction of the pose! But every morning, we persist. In some ways, it is good to have a partner to practice with because there are those cold mornings where I am too tired to get out of bed but knowing Basak is going to be there, I drag myself out of bed.

Our clay lab

I realized that I've spent more time discussing what I do in my off time than I do when I'm supposed to be working. For me, it is far more interesting to write about the other stuff because I spend the whole damn day working. I'm actually writing this now because I have such an aversion to paperwork and writing letters is far more interesting than describing the color and texture of a brick. I am working in the "clay" lab this year, which means I'm in a locked lab (for security) with three other ladies who specialize in clay balls (Sonya), ceramics (Nurcan) and building materials (Burcu). I have my laptop set up in here and then I have all my samples spread out across the table. I have collected a few more brick and mortar samples from the south shelter (and am currently avoiding filling in the unit context sheets and inputting that info into the database) but mostly I am working on processing samples from 2005. I pulled out two crates I stored from last year and I'm doing a particle size analysis. I have a tiny set of plastic sieves where I dissolve the sediment in water then pour the mud solution through the sieves. The sediment samples will settle according to their size fractions- sand, silt and clay. This sounds fairly straight forward but it takes me about one hour to process one 30g sample. The clay is then suspended in water so I leave it in a labeled bucket, cover it with mesh to avoid bugs landing in it, and leave it outside for about 3-4 days until the water evaporates out. But my sieves fast so I can process about 2-3 samples per day. This is not very much and keep in mind that I have over 200 samples, with more still to take. I did order a second set of sieves and when they arrive in a few weeks, I will be able to double the amount I process, in theory. This would then imply that I will be doing nothing but shooting water through a tiny little sieve for 6 hours per day. Luckily I have over 40 audio books on my iopd or I'd just loose the plot entirely.

In addition to the particle size analysis, I am also dropping acid. I just like saying that! I bought two acids- hydrochloric and hydrofluoric to use on the brick samples. HCl tests for the presence/absence of carbonates and HF tests for the +/- of carbon (organic material, specifically charcoal). Now, you ask, what does that mean? Good question. I have no idea. I've been arguing with various people about the value of the carbonates test and I have yet to hear a satisfactory answer yet. I am not convinced that this test will tell me anything, especially since carbonates leach and are subject to vertical transport within deposits. Oh well. For now I'm weighing out 5 g of sediment, putting it into a beaker, pouring 20ml of 10% HCl on it and watching it fizzle. Oooooh!

In theory, HF acid will give me +/- of charcoal and other organic material. The idea behind this test is to determine if "midden" (rubbish) was added to the bricks during their making. It is a simple question but some of the mortars look as if they are made of nothing but ash and junk while some bricks look like they are made out of nothing but pure clay. The intention of this test is to produce a quantifiable difference between different samples of different houses from different time periods. The HF test, however, has proven to be a more elaborate project. We have a conservation lab here where we do a lot of on-site conservation of objects, wall paintings, etc (sometimes the job of conservation is to re-assemble objects that the archaeologists destroyed upon excavation). This lab was built with the intention of having a fume cupboard but one was never built. Until I came along with this toxic chemicals, giving Ian the impetus to finally build one. But, given that Ian is my supervisor, he knows exactly how much grant money I have so apparently I am now paying for half of the expenses of this fume cupboard. The carpenter was in here today to take measurements and get going on building a frame for this thing. Basically, it is just a large extraction fan (like one in a kitchen) built over a large box with an upward sliding window to enclose the fume. All this effort just to drop a bit of acid on dirt, in the name of science, of course.

Well, that is enough from me for now. I should get back to these unit context sheets and finally finish what I've been avoiding for the better part of 6 days. ::sigh::

In lovingkindness,