Day 67

"Maisha ni safari ndefu” – life is a long journey. It’s the proverb on one of my khangas, but it also seems to describe my day. I didn’t sleep much last night, and as a result I felt thoroughly apathetic about going to the museum this morning. Today was our fourth attempt to see the artifacts from our rock shelter excavated in 2002. The last three times, I went in with high hopes. This time, I went in ready to accept whatever our fate may be. This was partially due to the wealth of bones we found in the field this summer which has made me feel less desperate about what might be at the museum. It was also because we’re at the end of our summer and I’m pretty tired. Anyway, I was the picture of serenity when we pulled up at the museum this morning.


You can imagine how surprised I was when I found that the staff were expecting us and had retrieved the collections for our viewing. I was even more surprised when there were unequivocal human remains present in the sample. Not a bag of teeth as was previously suggested (there were teeth, but they were faunal), but nonetheless a healthy portion of an adult skeleton. What’s more, it appears that this is a completely separate individual from the one we excavated this summer. The mystery of our rock shelter continues to grow. The discovery of remains at the museum kicked off a full day of hard work that I wasn’t exactly prepared for. I had come equipped with my forms and field reference manual, but I really didn’t anticipate there being quite so much material. After about an hour, Pam and Pastory left to seek our export permit at the antiquities division, leaving Katie, Jenn, and I to our labour. We spent the next 4.5 hours inventorying the bone collection without taking a single break. I identified and photographed the bones while Katie organized the bags and wrote labels and Jenn recorded. We were also fortunate enough to run into the Director of the museum, who we believed to be in Iringa, and speak with him about his excavation. I think there is great potential to collaborate with the museum on the analysis of these remains. I’m really interested to see how this relationship progresses over the next week. Although I started the day with pretty low expectations, there are right back up to normal, sky-high levels. Right when I thought this field season was winding down, one more final challenge pops up. If life is a long journey, this field season is sure doing a great job of imitating several lifetimes.