Me The Rookie @metherookie - Tumblr Blog

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ipadbaby

abstrakshun

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862 - 1944)

On the Viewing of Flowers and Trees watercolour series - 1922

wellwaterhysteria

if dracula had been released as daily snippets in 1897 the way it is today with the substack i know for a fact that all us girlies would have met up in the town square and our various parlours to talk about it.

wellwaterhysteria

"my husband would never think to collect recipes for me like this" one of us would say. "your husband isn't stupid enough to go to the carpathian mountains with little to no context as to who he's meeting either, bessie." we would all reply. "my husband also has bad dreams when he has too much paprika," another one of us would muse. "we hate your husband." would be the answering chorus.

lionfloss

Alexander Saidov

foxpost-generator

Octopuses can fit through any gap larger than their beak.

therebloggening

What a beautiful octopus.

squided

i was curious what the other side of the moon looked like so i googled it and

i’m so glad we got the side we did the moon’s ass ugly

one-in-lemillion

You’re so rude to Miss Moon the reason her ass is so fucked up is cuz she’s protecting us from meteors. Her face is beautiful so her ass can be disgusting and we can be safe.

doremiduck

mypoorcanary

breaking news: kitty cat curls into a ball and covers its eyes with paw while sleeping

ochipi

When people tell me, an archaeologist, what they find exciting about our profession

* big royal jewelry

* ancient temples

* decoding a long lost language

* dinosaurs

What actually gets us excited

* that time we were lucky with the weather

* when the digger knows his job

* lifting skeletal remains and the ribs don’t break

* when you manage to put the scale down for a photo without creating new crumbs

rhysintherain

When you tell a member of a descendant community about what you found and they go “no shit! Uncle Tommy told me about that!”

Things that are where they shouldn’t be. Bonus points if it’s obsidian

Hitting virgin sediment before hitting the water table

Conspicuously dense and diverse berry patches

Cut marks on bones. Bonus points if they’re more than 20,000 years old

micewithknives

In addition to these because those were spectacularly relatable for Australian archaeology:

When the temperature is Just Right™ for fieldwork

When the car has really good aircon travelling from site in the afternoon

One of the Indigenous representatives on a fieldsurvey goes “hey i wanna show you something” (it is ALWAYS something worth looking at)

a member of the public shows up to talk and DOESNT say “found any gold????” but actually knows things about the site

Things that are where they shouldn’t be AND that make the senior archaeologists blurt out “well thats weird”

pets visiting

anthropologist-on-the-loose

Can’t answer the berry thing with 100% certainty so I’ll let @rhysintherain explain it if they’re willing but I can answer the obsidian thing: obsidian is an EXTREMELY useful material. Can be cut into incredibly sharp and fine tools and weapons. Has been used by humans for eons. Plus it’s pretty. Obsidian also has a very specific geographic range because it is created by volcanic eruptions from magma with specific mineral components. So when you find some in a geographic location that doesn’t have any natural obsidian? You have solid evidence of human trade networks. Very exciting indeed.

rhysintherain

On top of that, obsidian can be fingerprinted to the exact flow it came from, to the point where Rudy Reimer has identified several flows from the same volcano with different fingerprints.

So if you find a piece of obsidian at a site and go “huh, I wonder where that came from?” There’s a solid chance you can send it to someone with an XRF gun and they’ll be able to tell you.

The berry patches thing isn’t as widely recognised or utilised in applied archaeology (although it really, really should be), but Chelsea Armstrong has done some amazing work with descent communities that combines ethnobotany and archaeology, and has found that the density and diversity of food plants, especially trees and shrubs, is higher near old village sites than in “wild” forest.

These forest gardens were cultivated by indigenous communities before contact, and even after the people were removed from their villages they continue be incredibly productive sources of food.

There’s an abandoned village site on crown land near where I grew up that is surrounded by a circle of extremely dense berry bushes. At a site where I worked a few years ago, the area was covered in patches of native wild mint. A site I visited that was home to a very wealthy precontact village there was considerably more Saskatoon berry shrubs than anywhere else in the area.

The plants remember where they were taken care of. The stones remember where they were born. The best archaeologists know how to listen to that sort of thing.

citizen-zero

okay I know we’re having fun dunking on Jonathan for ignoring the red flags and continuing on to Dracula’s castle but listen. now that I’m thinking about it makes absolute sense because like. he’s got to be pretty young right? like if he’s just gotten his real estate license and he’s engaged to be married for (I presume) the first time he’s probably not much older than early 30s at most. that’s the headcanon I’m going with anyway.

so put yourself in his shoes. you’re a young professional recently certified to work in a potentially very lucrative field and your boss sends you abroad to help a client buy and sell property. but wait, this isn’t just an ordinary client, this client is a COUNT. a nobleman. somebody wealthy enough to purchase property in another country. the commission on this sale is going to be very nice, and he might refer his similarly wealthy friends to you if you do a good enough job. this is an opportunity to really make a name for yourself in the field, and on top of that you’ve got a wife to support.

I’m just saying, if I, a 27 year old millennial, was him and I was facing the prospect of a big payday and a career boost when I’m trying to build a life for myself, the locals are gonna have to give me a more compelling reason to stay away than just bad vibes. I’m just saying, he’s a Victorian millennial.

nevver

Gone, Alessandro Gioiello

bestyouuniveristy

The best part of being authentic is that there is no image to maintain. You will delight some and disturb others, and none of it will concern the truth of your being.