It’s been an incredible time here in Qatar, working with the QIAH (Qatar Islamic Archaeology and Heritage Project) on the NE coastal pearling sites. I’ve been very involved with the Blogging Archaeology SAA session and other various side projects, so I have been distracted from my usual mode of field blogging, which is a little sad because I’ve been able to do some new and interesting things here. I have a half-dozen posts that I’ve been waiting to edit and bring out–hopefully I will be able to finish them up in this last week.
I think it sums it all up though in saying that it is a truly amazing experience to work with well-trained, professional archaeologists again. We had a fairly last-minute rescue job that I’ve been working hard at this week and I have rarely seen rescue archaeology done so efficiently and so well. Working with professionals is just so easy–you all know what needs to be done, and everyone pitches in to make it happen. The craft is respected and pleasure is taken in the little things, like exquisitely rendered sketches and less-than-mil grid accuracy. There’s a reason that academics have increasingly been hiring professional archaeologists (trained in single context) to excavate sites–it is fast, it is exacting, and once you have been on a project that employs these folks, there is no looking back. We were extremely well-managed by Tobias Richter, who took care of us, made sure that things ran smoothly, and kept a sense of humor about it all. It’s really the gold standard for how sites should be run.
The work that has been done in the name of the QIAH is absolutely top notch–performed by excellent archaeologists who have really given it their all. I’m proud to be a part of it, and actually pretty sad to be leaving Qatar!
Post redacted, March 7, 2013. There’s a first time for everything!
Colleen Morgan 