Well, this is probably my last blog post, and as promised, I am all done! I quite literally just finished. I sent my thesis out to my committee a couple of weeks ago, and earlier this morning I had my defense. Which was a little frightening, I have to admit! But it went pretty well and now it’s over with and I can breathe a sigh of relief. And get to work on the rest of my finals…. I’ve still got plenty of work to do before I can graduate! But no, all stress aside, I’m glad I did this and I’m proud of all the work I accomplished. And actually, I may be keeping on with it. My advisor and I are looking into continuing this research project into the summer, and perhaps into next semester – we’ll see what comes of it. Maybe I’ll even be able to get something publishable completed! That would be crazy exciting. We’ll see! But for now, I’m going to take a little break from thinking about it. Congratulations to all the rest of you thesis-writers out there, good luck if you haven’t defended them yet, and happy soon-to-be graduation!
Writing it up….
So, things are getting intense – my thesis is due in two weeks! – but at the same time, there’s not too much to say. Last week, though, I did go to the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference in Virginia Beach, along with a few other undergraduates and grad students who are working with my advisor. We’re all working on different projects related to the same site, so we all presented our research in one session, super early in the morning. It was very exciting! Very nerve-wracking too – I’ve never been to a professional conference before, much less presented a paper at one. But it went well in the end, and one of the archaeologists who attended our session even asked for a copy of my paper! Which made me feel incredibly flattered. And it was also a beautiful day, and the hotel in which the conference was being held was right on the beach, so that was great too. All in all, a good day!
More Data, Please!
Well, for such a short month, a lot’s been going on! I gave a presentation for the Honors Colloquium last week, wrote the paper I’m giving at the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference next month, and made a poster for the Science Symposium happening later this week. So I’m getting lots of practice presenting my findings! Which is good, I guess – just a little stressful all at once.
What does it all mean???
Well, the method works! I’ve been working on the analysis end of the project for the past several weeks, and that’s what I’ve concluded. (Hey, this is a pilot study.) Basically, looking at the data very simply (box plots and scatter plots), I can see that the sherds from the Kiskiak site and the sherds from the Chickahominy site fall into two separate groups – which is exactly what we hoped to see, considering that the sites are located on two different river drainages and the people building pots locally would have had access two different types of clays. If I were given a single sherd to test with the XRF spectrometer, I would have a really good shot at telling you which site it came from. So the XRF method can pick up differences in the clays and ceramics of the Chesapeake region, and therefore it has the potential to answer all sorts of interesting questions, like the ones regarding exchange patterns I proposed initially.
End of the Year, End of the Data Collection
Well, it’s the holiday season and doing work is inappropriate, so I think I’m going to keep this short….
Getting Numbers Back, At Last
Happy Fall, everyone! Guess what? For once, I have nothing but good news! Since my last update, I have run about 80 samples and collected clay and I think I’ll be done with data collection by the end of the semester.
Stuff Works Out
So, when I left you last, I believe I was at a bit of a low point in my research. Well, good news – things have gotten so much better! Fortunately, because they were getting kind of gloomy, there. Now, however, I’ve figured out how I’m going to get all of my data, and the results will be even cleaner than they would have been had the previous tests worked out in the first place.
Ups and Downs
Well, we’re approaching the end of September, classes are in full swing, and I’ve been dealing with some issues (as you may have gathered from the title). I almost put up a blog post in something closely resembling despair, but I decided to wait until I had happier news to lighten the mood – and fortunately, some happier news came along!
Status Update, or How There is No Vacation from Research
Not a whole lot to report for this month, even though it felt pretty busy! Mainly, what I’ve been doing is checking up on all my contacts to be sure that my project can continue forward smoothly – and also, I tried to squeeze in a little vacation time! It’s funny how work and research creep into your free time, though – every time I kick a rock on the ground, my brain automatically tries to figure out what kind of artifact it must have been – but it’s really just a rock. I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art while visiting my grandmother in New York a couple of weeks ago, and I immediately tried to analyze the ceramics that I saw all around me, before I could rein it in. It’s kind of fun, though, because it makes you realize how much you’ve learned.
More Ceramics, Not Enough Clay
So next week is the last week of summer research! I surprise myself with how sad I am about it. There’s still so much to do! But I’ve been working hard, nonetheless. For one thing, I met with a geologist about collecting clays for my study. This involved digging down into various parts of the site with a hand-held auger and hoping to find clay there. It wasn’t successful, but he said that he could bring his drill rig, which is a much more massive instrument attached to his truck, onto the site at some point in the future. So I will get clay soon! I’ve also been doing more XRF. It started out a bit slow, because I was away from the instrument for a while and the readings were coming up kind of funky. It turned out that someone else had been using the machine while I was away and left a filter in it, which I didn’t think to check for until several hours had passed. But it worked out in the end, and now things are going smoothly. In fact, I would be done with that portion of the work if I hadn’t expanded my sample set – now I’m taking data on ceramics from two even deeper strata as well, meaning even older sherds. It’s pretty exciting! Although, to be honest, most of the spectra I’ve been seeing for my sherds look pretty much the same so far. Sometimes I get a really high titanium spike and think, “Oh my goodness, this one’s different!” but it turns out in those cases that I accidentally aimed the X-ray at the label on the sherd instead of the ceramic surface. (All the sherds are labeled with pen on white-out and sealed with clear nail polish, and XRF is primarily a method of surface characterization.) I think, though, that once I actually go in and compare all of the spectra to each other purposefully and do some statistics, I’ll get some good results. If they are all the same, that result will just suggest that all the ceramics were made locally, which is useful knowledge in itself. So I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it. Anyway, once I’m done taking XRF data, I’ll start several other types of testing, as well. These will probably continue into the school year, since, as aforesaid, there is only a week left for research this summer. (Aaaaahh!) I’ll let you know how it all goes!