My young Harris, Ernie, has been gaining weight on a steady diet of thawed cotton rats, the by-product of six months’ field work on birds and rabbits—His first season of falconry ended two weeks ago. Today Ernie is almost 200 grams over hunting weight (which, he being such a tame hawk, was never very low); …
Month: February 2008
Wood Heat
Also from the New York Times: annoying poor people are firing up their dirty old woodstoves. I’ll give up my grimy old stove (80+ years– the woman who sold me the house, in her seventies, said it was their only heat and cook stove when she was young, and not new) when the Times buys …
The Box
Spring weather led us out in search of a legendary canyon this weekend. It is only twelve or so miles away, but all of this is off- pavement and a lot is through a river bed. Finally , you have to cross two ranches and I wasn’t sure what “jurisdiction” the box itself was in. …
Links
More and longer and prettier soon, but here is the usual presentation of friends, foes, follies, and gallimaufry, not to mention science.. Which first: a very old bat. (Zimmer has also devoted a new site to his collection of “Science tattoos”. Love that Archaeopteryx!) The long- distant migrant known as the red knot is in …
Daily Show: Pacelle “More of a gatherer…”
Anne D. sent this link to a Daily Show segment featuring (lampooning, actually) a PA attempt to legalize for hunting the ancient projectile weapon known as the atlatl. A local atlatl enthusiast finds himself ribbed by Daily Show field correspondent Jason Jones and takes it in stride. Providing the counter argument is well-coifed HSUS President …
Beef Recall for Cruelty Concerns
Humane Society of the United States President Wayne Pacelle, enemy of so many good things—dogs, cats, horses, hunting, eating meat, private ownership and the American way—maybe got this one right. Due to complaints filed by HSUS about conditions in a California slaughterhouse, 143 million pounds of beef are being recalled from shelves across the country. …
Some Ceramic Oddities
Most of the ceramics we have found here so far are fairly straight forward, like the Colorado Buffware rim sherd that is pictured above. Most everything we have seen has either been one of these buffwares (though some have a red slip) that were made east of here along the Colorado River or Tizon Brownware …
Beer Can Archaeology
As I said in the previous post, artifacts and features that are older than 50 years get treated as historic resources in our survey. That means we get to paw through a lot of 20th Century trash heaps. I am a confirmed prehistorian and I have to admit that this isn’t exactly my cup of …
Silence of the Lambs
Sometimes we see things out here that haven’t quite turned into archaeology yet. The white smear you see in the picture above is one of those. Hard to tell what it is at a distance. When you get a little closer you can see that it is a scatter of animal bone. My colleague Liz …
Who Am I?
I have picked up two skulls of this type while out here on survey and am not sure what species this is. Faunal identification isn’t my strong suit and I have no references with me. It’s not canid, but not sure where to go – ringtail? badger? More expert opinions than mine requested.