First Day of Field School - by Nick G.

So today we met at the Ventura harbor around 7 am. As it turned out most of the boxes of food and supplies we had did not meet the maximum weight requirement of 45 lbs, many of them were between 60-113 lbs. We loaded the boat and left the harbor around 8ish. The boat ride was like any standard boat ride, smooth sailing with a few bumps, but nothing serious. On the way to Santa Cruz Island, to drop off some hikers and campers, we ran into a large pod of common dolphins. I have seen pods of dolphins, but dang was that a lot of dolphins. We hung out in the pod for around 10 minutes or so watching them come and play by the boat.

After stopping at Santa Cruz Island, we ran into a small pod of bottle nose dolphins, that were jumping completely out of the water and playing in the boats wake. First time I have ever seen dolphins full on clear the waters surface. While boating on by Santa Cruz island we passed a small rock formation jutting out of the water and Dusty informed us that, Jon Erlandson explored a cave and found a first of its kind: a swordfish sword. Someone literally took a swordfish bill carved and sharpened it, put a handle on it and used it as a sword. Another passenger who was not with the field school had snapped a picture of a flying fish while it was still in the air.

Once we arrived on the island we were going to be working and staying on, we found out that we could only have 4 tents, so no students could have tents but the crew chiefs were allowed to. Since we only had an afternoon, we just learned basic compass skills, and how to create a field map of an archaeological site without modern technology. It was quite a challenge but it wasn’t as hard as I had thought. We had first learned how far our pace was by walking 200 meters and divide it by the amount of steps we took to complete it, mine was .77 meters per step. After learning basic field tech skills, we went across a gorge and checked out a shell bead midden, and some various shell middens.

We also had a talk about ethics and proper etiquette when dealing with archaeological sites. We learned that it can be disrespectful to take photographs of remains without the expressed consent of the tribe. We also looked at olivella shell beads and the micro drills used to make them.

So far the field school has been pretty dang fun. It is an awesome experience, hiking through waist high brush traversing cutbacks down an incredibly steep hillside. It is a lot of hard work, but makes getting back into the lodge much more rewarding knowing that you hiked up a mountain only to come down it off-trail.