with the dust and rattlin' bones

Well, today was fantastic.

Sometimes I still can't believe I'm here. It doesn't hit me like when I was in London, a bubbling spring of laughter that caught me when I was part of the city. It's more just a calm pleasant buzz of contentment and wonder. The sky, the hills, the artifacts, the people, the language...

Today I finally got to dig! They sent three of us to start a new pit with relative surety that we'd at least find something, most likely a burial, and right off the bat we found some related artifacts. Later in the day (our first day, mind) we started finding some really cool bone! Tomorrow is going to be absolutely wicked, but probably hard work. I had to go really slow and use dental picks and a brush—the very image of a stereotypical archaeologist!

I also started a new story, and got some input from some interested diggers. It turns out that archaeologists can be some of the most scientific and most spiritual people you'll ever meet. I think it's the anthropology, even though it's not as wishy-washy as proper anthro (one girl I worked with today said she moved from cultural anthro to archaeology because she couldn't stand the shades of grey and wanted yes/no answers. I wanted to ask how she felt about the whole aspect of archaeology where you make educated guesses that are probably true, but you often don't really know with confidence.)--it's still about digging deeper and trying to understand, by whatever means are at your disposal. There's so much inference and guesswork that goes with anthro/archae, and so much intuition, too. There's a quote from one of my tv shows about how intuition is just the name we give to experience, but there's something else there, too.

Anyway, my new story is sort of about a haunted house with a graveyard in the backyard being excavated. (Life influencing art, blah blah.) I started writing and it sort of drifted away from a proper ghost story, with an actual villain on which to pin the terror and plot, and has that sort of vague nebulous non-entity of pure terror that I love in things like Woman in Black. Atmospheric and creepy and the essence of evil without a face. Now, before you think me morbid, it was inspired by our conversations in the field today about creepy abandoned houses and haunted houses and the like.

Which brings me to my title for today (you know how I love my quote titles). It's a lyric from a song that is fast becoming my unofficial Romania 2013 theme song. It's called Rattlin' Bones by Kasey Chambers and, before you ask, yes, it's country/bluegrass song, but in the style of Southern Gothic rather than just straight country/bluegrass. (It's the same thing and that's a lame distinction, but it's a great song, okay?) But the lyrics are so Southern Gothic and kind of related to this dig

But I cut my hands

And break my back

Draggin' this bag of stones

Till they bury me down beneath the ground

With the dust and rattlin' bones

And that's archaeology, folks!