Day 43

Today was a productive day at the site. First and foremost, we had “the talk” with the two men, Suleiman and Thomas, who have been working with us for the past while. Per my ethics clearance from the Research and Ethics Board back home, I have to inform any workers of the possibility of finding humans remains, and give them the option to withdraw their services at that point or if and when remains are actually encountered. I don’t know why, but I had a lot of anxiety about this moment. Not so much that we might lose workers, but that local people would take great offense to our research and make it impossible for us to continue. The area around the site has a bit of a frontier feeling. It’s by no means lawless, but there is a system of justice that we can’t see and don’t understand. There aren’t exactly officers in the middle of rural Iringa to run to when the villagers don’t play nice. Therefore, we tread very carefully around sensitive issues like excavating human remains. This is also part of being an anthropologist first, and an archaeologist second. Regardless of how many permits and permissions we have acquired, and how much we want to pursue a hypothesis, we couldn’t ethically proceed with research that could cause harm to other people. However, I’m happy to report that after we carefully explained the possible outcomes of our excavation in Kiswahili, they were pretty gung-ho to proceed. I can’t say I blame them! Bioarchaeology is the bee’s knees.

After concluding our serious business, we photographed and mapped the current state of our trench. As of this morning, all 6 units are at the depth which is near or at the end of the Iron Age. We have reverted to our original units in order to begin investigating what lies underneath. I wasn’t thrilled with all the iron and slag we were finding in the previous levels, but I can’t say I’m much more thrilled by the thousands of quartz artifacts. Contrary to the opinion of my team members, loving rocks is not a requirement of being an archaeologist. Then again, I’m the bones girl of this operation. What I’m looking for is probably under those rocks, so you see where the conflict arises. Considering we have less than a month left in Tanzania, I just hope we all come out winners.