Day 25

We are wrist deep in the East African Iron Age, and probably will be for the next few days. It looks as though there will be thousands of artifacts per square metre. Right now, we are mostly seeing iron and iron slag, pottery, stone tools, and faunal bone. To a lesser extent, we have been finding beads and human remains. The work is going very slowly due to the density of artifacts, but we are collecting a wealth of data. The project is off to a good start.

We have also become somewhat of an attraction in the immediate area. The last 11 kilometres to the site follow an enlarged cattle trail that winds through several Wahehe and Maasai villages. In addition to the many cow and goat related traffic jams, we always see people along the side of the road. Since we introduced ourselves to the local farmers, we have been receiving one or more visitors at the site almost every day. Usually they just sit around and watch us dig, and occasionally ask questions or share our fruit. Today, an old Swahili man helped me pick out artifacts in a karai. Explaining what constitutes an archaeological artifact to someone who didn’t speak any English certainly tested my newly acquired language skills. But, like everything else around here, we made do. I imagine we come off as crazy foreigners digging in the dirt for ancient garbage, but so far everyone has been willing to humour us.

In other news, we named the bat in our rock shelter Popo Mtu, which means Batman in Swahili. We are 75% sure he doesn’t have rabies, and think he might eat insects which is great. Since the ghost of Mkwawa has been altogether absent, Popo Mtu is now the official mascot of IRAP 2010.