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- April 9, 2006
Final day ends with organized chaos
- Editor's Note: Check back daily for updates on the
progress and new photos of the Department of Anthropology's team's dig at
the Memorial Union.
Original
release
Saturday, April
1
Sunday,
April 2
Monday, April
3
Tuesday, April
4
Wednesday,
April 5
Thursday,
April 6
Friday,
April 7
Saturday,
April 8
Sunday, April 9
For nine days a team of student and faculty archaeologists from the Department
of Anthropology have spent a good portion of their time on a small tract
of ground adjacent to the Memorial Union.
There they have been excavating bones and other items left behind from when
the College of Veterinary Medicine was located on the site on the Iowa State
University campus in the 1880s.
By now the team has collected thousands of animal bones and related materials
dumped in a pit at the present-day Union site by the vet med school.
That all comes to an end Sunday, April 9.
Suddenly.
"We're finished at 6 p.m. on Sunday, no matter how much material is
left," said David Rapson, affiliate professor in the Department of
Anthropology and the project director. "Our work here is near the end."
The final day will be organized chaos.
"It's a frenzy trying to finish everything up," Rapson said, "as
we try to compile as much as we can.
"It tends to be extremely hectic."
Since the site that Rapson and his team have been working on is a construction
site for renovations to the Memorial Union, they won't have the advantage
they have at other sites they have worked on.
Now instead of "backfilling" the pit to preserve the items left
behind for further research, the team will be working up until 6 p.m. in
an attempt to collect as much data as possible.
"We won't have the opportunity to come back to the site," Rapson
said. "It will essentially be gone on Monday."
Not that Sunday's dig wasn't without some finds. The team found its first
horseshoe in the pit of primarily horse bones.
Rapson feels confident that his archaeology team has already collected enough
quality data to answer such questions as: "What is the age and sex
of the animal?" "How did they get to the veterinary hospital?"
"Were the remains buried incrementally, or all at once?" "Are
the bones only from the vet med school's anatomy lab, or elsewhere?"
"We are working a little faster these last days," Rapson said,
"but that's typical of any excavation. As you get closer to the end
you become more familiar with the site and as a result you become more efficient.
"We do some of our most productive work near the end of the fieldwork."
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Day 9 - Sunday, April 9
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