Welcome junior Ranger day. I'm Richard
Olson. I'm the Bighorn Canyon
archaeologist and today we're going to
talk a little bit about archaeology and
some of the tools and equipment that
archaeologists use and a little bit
about what we do.
Archaeology is an sub-discipline of
anthropology. Anthropology is the study
of humans and there's four sub-
disciplines of anthropology. There's
archeology, of course. There's cultural
anthropology and they study current life
ways. There's biological anthropology.
They study forensics in a lot of cases.
And then there is linguistics which is
the study of languages. Today we're gonna
talk a little bit about the safety
equipment and some of the equipment
again. So one important thing is a rain
jacket. Your rain jack is pretty
important, a lot of times weather comes
in, especially here in the Bighorn Canyon
weather comes in really fast. And so it's
best to be prepared with a rain jacket. I
like my Park Service rain jacket, nice
and green. Water's pretty important,
probably one of the most important
things to have out here. I go through
about four to eight of these a day, so
keep your water with you all the time.
Another important thing is gloves. You
never know when you're gonna need them.
Not necessary when you're surveying, but
a lot of times we're doing excavations
and stuff and those are important for
keep from getting blisters and things
like that.
Here in Bighorn Canyon we have two
special safety things that we have to be
aware of: bears and snakes. So we always
carry bear spray
and we're always wearing snake gaiters
when we're out doing work in archaeology
and in the rec area. Some of the other
things that we carry with us. We carry a
GPS unit. We use this to keep track of
where we find artifacts or features like
houses and then we log them in here and
we take them back to the office and put
them into our database.
Two very, very important
things that we carry with us are a map
and a compass.
Sometimes your technology like your GPS
fail on you and you've got to be able to use a compass and a map to find where
you're at and how to get back to your
truck. When we're out there and we find
something, we usually use these flags.
Different colors mean different things
depending on where you're working. And
you use them to identify artifacts and
features and then we take that data and
we use our GPS again and log it. And then
sometimes we'll log that information
also on a piece of paper, using our
handy clipboard. And we have site forms
that we use and then when we do that we
also have to take pictures as part of
that. Got to have a camera and we have
this, which is called a photo scale and
North arrow. So these are in centimeters
and it lets us show how big an item is.
And then we use the North arrow so that
we can leave it in place we don't pick
it up and we leave it in place and we
point that to the north and we take a
picture. And then so that's for survey so
we also do excavation occasionally and
so excavation is where we dig into the
ground and we methodically take layers
of the dirt off. And then when we go in
there we find artifacts and we catalogue
them similar to this. We draw a map on a
piece of paper of what the excavation
unit looks like. So one of the things
that's important in there is a level. We
try to make the ground surface as level
as possible. And we also use this to make
sure that when we use a string we have a
different kind of level but we use a
string and it has a level on it and we
use that to measure off of.
We also have a trowel. This is very
important.
A trowel is what we use to move the dirt
with. We use these small ones, we have big
ones and we have even little even
smaller ones. Then we also use brushes
sometimes you really need to get into
fine details and don't want to disturb
something so you'll use a brush to
excavate. And sometimes you just plain ole
run into a rock. And when you run into a
rock and you know it's just a rock and it's
too big to move by hand, sometimes you
have to break it. And so you'll take this
here rock hammer and break it so you
don't disturb the light area of your
thing. We try to leave as much
intact as possible. And then one you're
doing all that you have these lovely
color charts here and so we get a play
with color charts so knowing how to use
crayons. Just kidding.
We use these color charts to tell what
color the dirt is that we're at and so
that we can distinguish it between other
dirt as the layers change. And that helps
us to understand sediment deposition. And
then to carry all this stuff, especially
this stuff over here, you've got to have a
good backpack. And so I like this bigger
backpack here. Fits a lot of stuff. Fits
all my water, all my safety gear. And we
pack it all up, throw it on our back
and head out into the great beyond. And
that's it for archaeology. Have a great
Junior Ranger day and we'll see you next
time you're in the park.
