Archy time!

Rained last night.  Beautiful to sleep in a tent to the sound of rain.

Split off from geo and worked with archaeology today.  Geology was pretty much done with the goal of finding the contact between the clay rich and large clast rich soils.  Our hypothesis is that the dissappearing water flows are due to the presence of a contact, or change in soil type.  Water would most likely run off the surface of clay, and the clastic soils would be a subsurface conduit for water flow and would be the point of disappearance of the water.

But today, I hiked around with Jessica and Shelby.  I learned quite a bit about types of archy features from them, and often had to remind myself that these girls majored in some form of archaeology or worked in it, as I kept thinking I would see something, but they would correct me.  My interest was hiking into the vegetated areas to see if there were rock features, and these vegetated areas were in the steep slopes with LOTS of vegetation.  I also find that features are easier to find looking up than going downslope.  That way if there are rock walls that are covered in vegetation, one is looking up at the wall below the vegetation instead of looking down at the vegetation covering the wall.

I have gotten very excited about LiDAR and eCharging and mapping the valley.  However, a lot was done today with the UAV’s and imaging.  Ted took his UAV and flew it up to the cliff faces.  A-HA, UAV up to the caves!  Ted spoke about running transects along the wall faces, which would be very complementary to the thermal project of temp differences within caves.  WOW, to actually be able to see inside an inaccessible cave!  (Well, inaccessible to all but the people that put the bodies in them)

BUT, laser has suddenly popped into the equation…  Laser on archaeology areas that are covered in vegetation could possibly cut through the vegetation.  It would be interesting to use laser with LiDAR to find covered areas.

My brain has stopped working.  Unfortunately, I seem to put off my blog until all other things are finished, and by that time, I can’t think straight.