It's not every day you get to clean Bronze Age bones.

So about yesterday (Friday 5 July)

I believe I mentioned that yesterday the forecast called for rain and so we went exploring for the morning. But in the afternoon, we met up at the lab and cleaned off bones from a Bronze Age burial for a few hours. Now, I'm not one for lab work and never have been, and there's a reason: it calls for me to work slow and steady and calm. I'm not usually good at that. In fact, the most common comment on my work (for school, on tests, at work, around the house, etc) is that I need to slow down and focus. So I was understandably a little iffy on being responsible for the fragility of over-1000 year old bones. 

It ended up being a really nice, kind of soothing, exercise. It forced me to slow down and think, which is something I'm not always keen on. In much of my life, when I'm doing something, I tend to not plan. I'm fairly lazy about the foresight. I generally figure I'll pick it up as I go, because much of what I've done has been that style. Watch what other people do and repeat what works. Living in Surbiton? Do what I normally do and see what changes I need to make in my daily routine. Figuring out London and the tube? Follow one person, then another, then another, until you know where you are. Linguistic research? D. says to just go with it and go out and do it. Lots of it is just doing (and the other half is ignoring thinking about what I have to do, but that's another blog post). So being forced to slow down and think and focus with all of me (mind, eyes, hands) is an interesting experience, and was fairly meditative by the end. 

Not to mention, I was periodically struck by the scope of what we were doing. The dig back home is really cool and I get to play with musketballs and animal bones, but that's fairly (comparatively) recent history. These are the remains of a person from 1600 BCE. One thousand and six hundred years before the current time marker of the birth of Jesus. That's 3613 years ago. That's incredible. And they were trusting me with this. That pressure and scope definitely added to my determination to do it right. I was responsible for the remains of a real person from a long, long time ago. I still can't quite wrap my mind around that. 

Also, pictures from Budapest are up!