Fantomy w Polska

July 21st

July 19th & 20th 

Back in Poznan.  Waking up at 5am after a long night of BBQ and talking was tough, but I was happy to be heading back to the city.  Once there my friends Maciej and Taria and I went out for breakfast where I had eggs for the first time since beginning the fieldschool.  THEY WERE DELICIOUS.  On a serious note:  that catering food in Drawsko turned me vegetarian.  Trust me.  Once you’ve had pickled pork meat you’ll never want to see another sausage again.

Maciej and I also walked around that afternoon (Maciej lives in Poznan), so I got to see a bit more of the local’s side of the city.  This graffiti is under one of the main bridges that crosses Cathedral Island in Poznan, the dog is Lili (the softest pupper on the planet!), and the mural of buildings is a... well, a mural.  But it took me a few seconds to realize it wasn’t real!

July 18th BBQ

These ladies and I shared a small classroom for living quarters for 3.5 weeks on air mattresses in (essentially) the middle of a small but noisy town.  I am so happy to have met every single one of them and am lucky to have had such great roommates!  From left to right is Ariana, from CA, Stephanie, from Sydney Australia, Kora from CO, Fiona from Oakland CA, Me, and Krisit from BC!

The last day of fieldschool we were still required to be in the field (or lab) working from 8-3.  Some BAMFs worked right until 1st dinner at 4pm, and at 5pm we had our Osteo final!  It went well, and the best part was that afterward we were free!!!  We had drinks and a BBQ with the instructors, and had a wonderful time relaxing, saying our goodbyes to those who were leaving early, and sharing stories about how much we couldn’t wait to eat something other than pickles, deli meats, and potatoes again!

July 15th

A kayaking trip!  This is Taria, my new friend from NYC!  We did a 21km kayak trip down a river with some pretty intense obstacles (I’ve kayaked many times before, but you don’t have to worry about fallen trees in an ocean).  I was hoping to do some bird-watching but we were having too much fun talking and singing to really get any nature-watching done.   At the end of it all was a BBQ with delicious and well-deserved foods, and I got to try a new dessert called “piepsisz bananan”, which is a bbq’d banana with pepper sprinkled on top, a recipe learned from Morocco.

July 13th-14th, 17th & 18th

July 12th 2017

After finishing excavating and cleaning the bones of the 7-12 month old, AJ and I returned to the field with new partners.  Taria and I were given another grave (another sub-adult), and as we dug found that the preservation was unfortunately horrible.  The cranium was intact, but the rest of the body had disintegrated due to being so close to the surface of the land, and not much else was left, and none of it in good condition.  We were careful and able to save both the left and right ilia, the right femur, and a disassociated tibia. This was also unfortunately my last time out in the field. 

Mushrooms are a really big thing in Drawsko! *badunst*  Apparently the day before the field school began they held the annual mushroom festival (and I’m sad that I missed it!).

Today in the field we began troweling centimeters at a time in order to gently and evenly expose areas of disturbed dirt.  Which to me looks just like regular dirt. But I’m beginning to know when to look for patterns of mottled or marbled earth as opposed to one solid color (indicating that different types of soils have been mixed together and put back).  So in one quadrant we have some very promising rectangular patches, while we still need to continue troweling in the other 3 quadrants to remove more topsoil.  When troweling it’s really important that the surface remains even and smooth, and since we’re working in sand it’s easy to do if you angle the trowel (aka ‘gardening spade’) correctly.  I’d love to practice troweling in different types of soils just to get a sense of what types of obstacles to expect.  Yes, mom, that means we will have a pit in our backyard. :)

Just kidding.

We continued to find lots of Bronze-Age ceramics from the site, along with disarticulated bone (fragments from 17th and 18th century skeletons that are no longer in their original context because of disturbances - in this instance it’s field plows), and cremated bone (from the Early Bronze Age ~1,000 B.C.E).  We even found a bunch of teeth!

Tomorrow I’ll try to do a write-up of the history of the site since I haven’t really shared what I’ve been learning about it yet.  So expect some history to come your way!

Some of my favorite things to do in the evening:  Walk around Drawsko.  Drink tea.  Drink tea while walking around Drawsko.  Practice my Polish.  Play ukulele.  Identify birds.  Sketch birds.  Read.  Practice Juggling.  Study.

Spent the weekend in Drawsko and ran through wheat fields, walked all around town, collected wildflowers, and visited the marina at dusk while being eaten by bugs.  It was magical!

2 days worth of topsoil removed!  (20m x 5m x 25cm x 22 exhausted bodies.  The top photos are from the excavation site, the cows watch us on our walk to and from the dig (it’s a 30 minute walk, partly through a field of wheat).  

Today was our 2nd day in the field, and 5 hours of intense manual labor removing topsoil from our quadrants.  The goal is carefully and evenly remove dirt in order to expose the underlying soil, and at our site we continued until we started to see consistent discoloration in the soil that would indicate organic matter or a feature.

I can say that I’ve got the bucket-o’-dirt-passing down.  My shoveling skills need some work.  We cleared out 10′x5′ meters of dirt, about 25cm down, and uncovered some promising features.  Hopefully we’ll find both skeletons from the 16th & 17th centuries, and maybe even some ceramic pots and cremated remains from the Bronze Age (~1000BCE).  We’re going back to the field tomorrow to finish removing topsoil from the other two quadrants that we’ll be excavating in, and once we’ve got everything leveled we will begin to map the quadrants, get levels for each feature (still not sure what the technical term for that is, I’ve only heard it in Polish so far), and only then will we begin gently using trowels to remove layers of soil to see if the features can reveal any artifacts or remains.

Day #2 in Drawsko!

Today we took it a bit easy and had breakfast at 8am (cereal, lunch meat, and yoghurt) then split into 2 to do a bit of training with site leveling and lab work. We were so fast at site leveling that we had some extra free time, so I got to practice my Polish, read and play before lunch.  After lunch we walked out to the field and did a pedestrian survey of the site (walk slowly in a line through 15m quads and gathering surface artifacts).  There was a lot of Bronze Age pottery and burned bone scattered on the surface area.  I found some teensy lithic fragments (so proud!) and a human canine (along with many other bits).  After an hour of survey we then walked back for 1st dinner (chicken patties with thick mushroom gravy - apparently mushrooms are a big deal in Drawsko) and then had a bit more free time as our lecturer wasn’t at the site yet.  

For 2nd dinner we had canned fruit salad, and a garbanzo corn green salad (it’s usually very light), and for desert there was ice cream.  Now, I know you’re wondering about 3rd dinner, but that doesn’t exist unless you count midnight snacks.

Our lecturer Marta is a PhD student who’s been working at this site for 6 years.  She told us a bit about what has been found and what to expect as far as the work and process of excavation goes, and it was nice to have so many questions answered.  I’ll post tomorrow with what I learned, because apparently the articles that I read from the internet to prepare, were very wrong (and very old).

Tomorrow is our first real day of work in the field!  We’ll be using shovels to carefully remove the sandy topsoil from the site, which will probably take all day.

2 hrs and a beautiful countryside later, we landed!  Our lodgings are on the campus of the small school in Drawsko.  Us students sleep 6-8 to a classroom (except for the guys, who share a whole room between the 2 of them), with a small kitchen (no oven :C) and long dining room.  The showers are in the gym area across the courtyard, and so we get to use the gym as well.

The orientation was simple and brief; do the work, do your chores, be considerate, no fraternizing with the stray cats or dogs, and have fun!  

With the laws laid, it was time for dinner!  We had a stuffed pork sausage thing (I asked what was in it, and the whole table laughed), with a corn salad, cheese, and deli ham.  For desert we had the best, freshest, strawberries I’ve had since I was young and harvesting them from my neighbour’s garden.

After dinner we took a look at the lab, talked a little bit more about some logistics of the school, and then it was free time. Taria, who I met yesterday in Poznań, and I decided to stroll around the town for a while and get a sense of the place.  Taria speaks Polish, and helped me ask a nearby grocer for scissors (to cut flowers).  No luck - but that didn’t stop me from making a bouquet of wildflowers anyway.  We passed by lots of unclaimed doggoes, which seemed to be part of the status-quo of Drawsko.  The people were either very nice, or very uninterested.

Day #5 in Poznań

Loving this weather like crazy!  The sun peeps out, but not too much, and then it rains so gently for a second and then back to warmth and coziness under a foggy sky.  I wish I could send my SB garden a postcard.

In this photo we’re crossing a bridge over the Warta river to get to Cathedral Island, the birthplace of the city of Poznań (the town center moved in 1300 to where it is now).  The cathedral itself was closed because it is a practicing church, but one of the nearby buildings (not pictured) is the Architecture Museum, built right over one of the first ramparts of the initial city (ca. 1000ce).  It was a fascinating museum with high-tech and interactive displays (many of the museums in town are like this), and I learned so much about the origins of Poland itself under the duke (?) Miesko I (who is buried in the Cathedral).  The staff was wonderful and after walking through the exhibits we had a great conversation about schooling in the US vs. Poland.  10/10 would recommend.

After the Architecture Museum the group headed back toward the Stary Rynek (Old town), and I broke off to visit the Dalineum - a museum housing a collection of Dali’s work from his “Divine Comedy” period.  It was amazing to see his pieces and learn more about the wide variety of work he did in all sorts of sectors.  <3 Dali!

I also visited the Archaeology museum today for several hours (yes), and got maybe too excited to see the various lithic (stone tool) fragments that have been collected in the area from the neolithic period (pre-pre-pre-Poland).  The hostess kicked me out at closing time in the kindest way imaginable, and even entertained my questions thoroughly while ushering me toward the door.  Again, 10/10 would recommend.

PS: I bought a thing today… but I’m gonna keep it a secret for now ;)

Day #4 in Poznań has been a delight!

I began with a shower and a scavenge for coffee: shops don’t open until 10am here!  Wandered in circles through the old town area and got many (MANY) pics of the architecture and some of my favorite graffiti. Met up with Steph and Katie (pictured) at a GIANT 6-7 story mall (coffee finally acquired).  We walked around the old town area and were in the perfect places at the right times to a) watch the famed Poznań Billy Goats come out a the clock tower, b) go on an 1.5 hr English tour of the Old town area, and c) meet up with 2 others at the St. Martin’s Croissant Museum.

The croissant museum was hilarious and informative.  Not only did we “learn” how to make the St. Martin’s croissant (v. diff. from the Austrian “French” croissants), but we also got to learn a bit more lore and context for the Town Square.  I’d highly recommend this event! Only 16zl!  After that I had the best grilled cod in my life with the sweetest  baby carrots and leek sauce at a nearby restaurant. 

On full stomachs our team, (with and additional 3 from the field-school), made our way to the National Museum.  Now, I thought this was going to be a historic museum, with all the tchachkis *nerdish giggle*, but instead it was an art collection *nerdish HUZZAH*.  I was introduced to some amazing Polish artists that I’d never heard of before, saw a beautiful Monet (a beach landscape), and got to expound upon the evolution of the ‘Judith and Holofernes’ representations in renaissance painting.

As if that weren’t already the perfect day, we came back to the square for delicious drinks, I got to play with hundreds of bubbles being blown in front of the old Town Hall, and then met back up with everyone for dinner at Ratusova, were I had kascka (duck).  It was delicious.  Belly full and mind saturated my fellow Mercure residents and I made our way back to the hotel for one last “Mad-Dog”, and 60 minutes of intriguing political conversation later I made my way to my room. 

Walking through the center of Poznań, where very other building is a relic.  This building is the theater, with a university and church behind it. The theater was built by some dude from Munich, who really was more than just “some dude”. I’m guessing he was a “Big Deal Dude”, and that the pegasus on top of the building was his signature mark.  

As you can probably tell from the photo, the weather here is AMAZING.  Today was a comfortable 68F, with gently clouded skies despite the lightning storm that came through last night.  It also rained briefly this afternoon, in a sweet, gentle way.  The brief “passing through” feel of the weather reminds me a lot of Florida or Hawaii, just without the stickyheavy humidity.

I got dinner today with A.J., a fellow digger bound for Drawsko.  We had delicious food at the WineStone restaurant attached to the hotel Mercure, and tomorrow we’ll be meeting up with a few more lost souls to explore the town more thoroughly.  Note:  European “asparagus” is not asparagus.

I also successfully found a beautiful book on birds in Poland.  Let the birb stalking begin!