Now that I’ve been here a week, I have a better sense of what we’re working on! The youngsters I’m with (most of whom are students of archaeology) have been educating me.

They tell me, that for them, this is the ultimate of digs, and the reason they got into the field. We are digging in a cave called a Sima, that is probably 2 stories high. A sima is a cave that you enter into from above, so when we dig (about 6 of us at a time) we are perched high up on a scaffold at the 30,000 year level.

It’s a looong way down

Right now, we have designated our finds as “party in the cave” since we have found mostly animal bones, burnt and unburnt (burnt, due to cooking) Seems as I’m not the only one who liked to eat in Spain. There is a lot of turtle and an unusual amount of horse. I cannot get the vision out of my head of a horse wandering by and falling mistakenly into this cave, legs akimbo.

Our greatest find was by a new woman who joined the dig who is a professor of Archaelogy in England who found a hammer stone or pestle, about 6 inches long and 2 inches high, an oblong, rounded stone, used to either make arrow points or to pound vegetation for cooking. She also found the distal (hoof bone) of an ibex and a so-called Levallois point which is an actual arrow type head, as opposed to the flakes (or discarded point parts that collect when making points)

We spend our days digging for 6 hours or cleaning the finds for 6 hours. Then, we come back to the lab to sort our finds. Today, I was actually the roper…the person who dumped all of the dirt–every scrap of dirt we scrape in the cave–into a bucket that is then lowered down those 2 stories by means of a pulley.

That would be Mrs. Roper to you

You too can look stylish while hauling dirt!

A guy stays at the bottom of the cave (or about 100,000 more years back in time) and dumps the dirt into sacks. The sacks are then delivered to the cleaning area, where they are reviewed meticulously for bones and flakes. It’s painstaking and a little discouraging, since many times we’re looking at 2 cm sized black flakes. I wish I was exaggerating. We sort by: classiable or unclassifiable Microfauna or Macrofauna that is either burnt or unburnt. Also, teeth, turtle and lithics (flakes). But, this will hopefully all change next week. I just found out that our professor has predicted that next week, he expects to be at a level where we find Neanderthal bones. OMG, to say the least.

By the way, if this all seems like I’m making it up, I can vouch for my being here with this article in the local paper. There I am!

In the meantime, we had yesterday off and headed to the beach at Mar Menor, which is an inlet of the Mediterranean, maybe 10 miles away. Beautiful azure warm water. You could walk out about 1/4 of a mile and still be up to your hips. All of the youngsters baked, while I hid under a tiki umbrella, but somehow, I still managed to get burnt. When people look at my chest and back, they wince, but, I tell them “it hurts you more than it hurts me”. Nothing a little alcohol can’t cure! Speaking of which, I just found out one of my favorite Spanish liqueurs is made close by: cuarenta y tres (43) a vanilla liqueur that I mix with orange juice and milk for the most delicious orange-sicle you’ve ever tasted. I also just found out that bacon-wrapped dates are a specialty of this area, as are melon wrapped in ham. Heaven is Murcia, Spain.

Torre Pacheco

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Torre Pacheco 37.779028, -0.868751

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Greetings from Pacheco de Dolores, a small town about 25 miles from Cartagena, Spain, the oldest port from the state of Carthage. Yes, I survived the train crash…I am in the other corner of Spain right now, although I will in fact, most likely be taking that train in a few weeks, since my cousins live in Galicia and I´ll probably be headed there.

As for my trip….It was a long one! 2.5 hours to Dallas, 1 hour layover at DFW, then 8.5 hours to sunny Madrid, .5 hour cab ride to my dear friend Gloria´s place. I am 9 hours ahead of all of you in Seattle, so I´m a little confused when it comes to time, but I am certainly not confused when it comes to food. Almost as soon as I landed, I started eating. I am lucky enough to have 2 friends in Madrid, who I met while I was in college here. My other friend Consuelo and her husband Jesus (I told him we don´t have that name in the US, since it would equate to being called God) invited me to their house for fresh large shrimp, jamon serrano and queso manchego. Yes, I can sense the envy from afar.

Anyway, after spènding the night in Madrid, I took a 4.5 hour train ride down here to the glorious S.Western coast of the country. I passed some old windmills, of the Don Quixote variety, then, after opening my eyes from a nap, saw some of the newfangled Iberdrola windmills that are now all over Spain (those who have driven through the Gorge in WA will have seen the type) The windmills felt a perfect juxtaposition of the old and new here.

I am on the 2nd day of my dig now, trying to accustom myself to the heat and humidity and to being the viaja of the group. I am about 20-25 years older than all of the others here, except for the professor and his two handsome Spanish assistants. It´s in the 90s every day and we have one fan for our room of 7 women. I put wet sheets on the bed last night, which at least cooled me off and will have to serve me well tonight, since I got a sunburn today.

Yesterday, we toured our site called Sima de las Palomas, named for the palomas or doves that lived in the cave. The site is a short climb up Cabezo Del Gordo mountain to a couple of interconnected caves. This is where Paloma, the first Neanderthal lady was found. Her skull, when they found it, looked like it had a growth on the side, which, after being x-rayed, was discovered to be one of her hands beside her head. It is surmised that she was buried in the pose of a person sleeping with her head upon her hands.

As you can see, my English is already stilted. Once again, I am one of the few bilingual speakers here. We are 4 English girls, 1 from Sweden, 1 from Montreal and 5 Spaniards. Everyone now knows I speak both languages and, although I feel like a bit of an outsider due to my age, I think the language will come in handy. I realized today, that I joke around in 2 languages…I just cannot seem to help myself.

Today, some of us starting excavating, while others of us (me) sieved…that is, took the buckets of excavated dirt and washed it and sorted it. We are finding mostly animal bones that date to about 60,000 years ago, the same time of the Neanderthals. Many of the bones are burnt, meaning, they were animals eaten by the Neanderthals. We´ve also found flakes, which are the bits of rock that are castoff when a spearpoint is made. I sound like I know what I´m talking about, don´t I??? This has, in fact, been a different process from digging for dinos, since those bones are way bigger and we toss all of the chunkasaurus bones and don´t go through everything. The entire cave where Paloma was found will be excavated. It rises about 50 feet, with scaffolding from top to bottom. Right now, they are only about 10 feet from the top, but close to the bottom a panther paw was found. So, if anyone wants to come on this dg for the next 50 years, chances are you´ll still be needed.

Yesterday, we went exploring in the cave system of the mountain. This was frightening, since there were only a few people with flashlights and, obviously, no light enters after about 20 feet. We found water that seeps in from the sky, although this area is filled with aquifers that water the many crops (oranges, melons, peppers) here. At one point, I walked along with a girl in front of me. In the close to pitch black, you must be careful to distinguish black and really black. As I looked down and to my right, I saw a really black darkness on the ground, which I steered clear of, but which she stepped right into… and down she went! She had stepped right into the darkness…a hole in the ground and she clung to the edge by her hands. I ran over and helped her out. She didn´t fall far, and in fact, it was a long slope down, but not something I would like to repeat.

It´s now almost 9pm and I´m off to dinner. We eat 4 meals a day here in Spain…breakfast at 7am, merienda of a bocadillo (for me a chorizo and tomato sandwich), the big lunch meal at 2pm, with sangria of course, and now dinner. I know, life is rough, right?

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