Coming back home and seeing friends, family, past coworkers, and customers from my month-long hiatus back in the lower 48, I got to explain a few times to various people just exactly what I was doing with my time in Alaska and beyond in the future.
Once you get past the preliminary, "Are you fishing?" and I tell them I'm studying archaeology, I get one of two responses.
1) That is the coolest thing evAr. I wish I could do that.
or
2) The people who get that look where they don't want to offend but can't understand why the hell I'd want to be out in the field getting dirty and digging shit up. It's probably mostly because they've never been much for the outdoors and since they can't see themselves doing in, they wonder why I want to.
It also just might be that some people don't understand the allure of archaeology and can only understand more "society-aiding" professions like retail or becoming a doctor, etc.
Some people I can immediately tell they don't care about what I do at all, so I try not to bore them with details. Others seem interested but it's a farse. I start to talk about the coolest shit I've learned and their eyes start to glaze over.
It's a rare person that actually follows my enthusiasm.
I think making tools out of rocks and mammoth tusks is the coolest thing ever.
Other people are like... uh, we have guns.
On a side note.
Right now I'm reading
Bones, by Elaine Dewar. The author is Canadian and initially starts by giving credit to older human remains found in Canada and then moves on to the more well-known remains like Kennewick Man. She interviews the archaeologists with first hand knowledge of what happened and what research was done on the remains. She covers the politics involved between how access to the remains means access to economic pull between the government and native tribes.
What I found most interesting were that weavings, both aged around 9 - 9,400 years ago were found in both Nevada and Newfoundland. Both seemed to have the same diamond pattern and were manufactured in the same, or similar manner.
Moccasins of equal age were also found in a cave of Nevada.
These were probably made from marmot hide but were sewn together using hemp.
Hemp has been around for 9,000 years.
That's well before the advent of known agriculture in the new year and a couple thousand years shy of the oldest known agriculture in the old world.
Hemp's versatility seems to have been known for quite some time.
