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Quenton looked up from desk and small stack of essays still in progress of grading. It isn't official office hours for students to be visiting about problems or tutoring-

Ah, not a student. Not from any of his classes anyway, though if the man had enrolled as a non-traditional student remained to be seen. I didn't expect him back, really.

"If we meet again, maybe we can exchange more than just our lightly guarded stories." Are you here for stories, or something else? "Blackwell. It has been a couple of months, has it not?"

And you have remained in the city despite warnings. "Settling in? To what do I owe the visit?"

We'd have heard of any digs nearby through the department. So what is your game. Quenton bridged his hands in front of his mouth, while considering the man, resting his lips against the knuckles of his fingers. The hyper-feeling and simultaneous numbness of the scarred portion remained, months and months if not more than a year on, and he suspected it might never mitigate.

"If you could tell me what you'll be doing at the site, I'd be able to steer you towards better books. No one person sits there doing all the things, especially not at a 'prospective' site. If it isn't permit-approved and altogether, you won't be doing much more than small samples for Geomorphologist review, mapping/diagramming the proposals, and photography and general survey. "

"Literaturewise, a starting place would be Renfrew and Bahn's Archeology Essentials: Theories, Methods and Practice. It's on our 101a Syllabus. As are some excepted readings on the history of ethics and process of archaeology. I can give you a hardcopy of the syllabus, if you want."

"Excavations dig through soil layers formed by people’s activities. The soil layers provide clues about what happened on a piece of land and whether a site exists where study could be conducted. Through soil analysis, archaeologists date sites, learn about the environment at the time the soil layers were formed, and determine if a part of land was part of settlement, agriculture, or wild. The first step is to perform an initial survey in which the goal is to identify if any archaeological sites are in the area. State and federal laws require that land use decisions take into account the effect of a project on the area. If the site is to be in a significant historic sector, which it generally it is on some map to be looking to excavate there in the first place, cultural resources could be damaged or endangered by an excavation. The laws apply to all federal and state lands- National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the military. Private land that uses federal or state funds doesn't effect that requirement. Typically, the agency proposing the project pays for the work."

"Site Logs are required for all such endeavors...all personnel are submitted to a process of recommendations from assistants to contracting, like operating digging machinery, survey equipment, camera or flight crew. Problems with things being stolen or ruined over the decades. Then a review of existing records to see if the an area has been examined already and if any sites are recorded for it- those prior site logs or zoning concerns. Most states here on the East Coast have an Office of State Archaeology, which maintain the central records. The lead archaeologist may also check with colleagues based at universities and Indian tribes within the project area to see if they have concerns or know about areas of importance. "

I doubt seriously you just 'happened' on an opportunity to faff about at. After the changes from the barbarism and cultural appropriations in the field rampant through the 1940s? Casual comings and goings is something from Hollywood. Like police movies never showing the mound of paperwork and processing. There are no dig sites local and active to this area....for what few excavations are going on in the U.S. It's mostly response to new construction pipelines and powerlines as it is. You don't look or act a contractor sort. I'm not sure what I do make of how you act. So far as I'm aware, no one has been into this office to review any locality. Unless ...working through another university? Going over state lines? I'd be interested in hearing if there is a dig even one state away to make connections with them for the undergrads. We could set up an observation of process day. What is your reason, or excuse, for asking, Blackwell....if it isn't actual archeology? The lattermost thought had no ready answer to his mind. Just enjoying conversation with a Graduate Student was too weird to really consider offhand, even if supported by the man showing up again out of the blue. There was a whole university full of graduate students, though, and beyond the bone jewelry they'd not had any specific emotional connections.

He didn't think.

Blackwell persisted in being an enigma, both in impressions and time of exposure. He was more like a summer wind than a person, so far, appearing at odd interval with no appreciable predictability, no known destination, no known origin.

Outside of state and country bounds. Quenton's eyes narrowed only briefly, a reflexive twitch that wasn't sure if it was judgement, suspicion of illegality, and annoyance of what he was going to do about that himself, if anything. I don't have time for this sort of game with everything else.

It is exactly that sort of indifference that turns a blind eye to so many things. That allows so many things. What possible justification could someone have told themselves that not getting professionals to do a dig, or to analyze a dig, could be worthwhile? "Not just anthropology. What you're talking about wants an even more specialized field called forensic anthropologists. Someone off the street picking up a handful of books on the subject are going to make gross errors in prediction and suggestion of what they are even looking at, misidentification, and probably damage the site and any other viable sites around it. "

"Armchair archeologists will just dig holes, without realizing the soil itself, how it is layered and what it is made of can tell a story. They'll not even realize there's a whole field called stable isotope analysis, and that it has forensic applications. A for instance- bones from the Victorian era were misidentified as a homeless child, in one instance. Later research by experts found the likely identity of the bones through sifting hospital records after tracing that the bones had syphilitic eating away at the bones. The amount and severity, as well as the level of lack of development showed it wasn't a child, but a teen girl who had lost her home and lost source of reliable nutrition so as to remain extra petite. She was forced into a live off prostitution, hence the multiple exposures to the STD. "

I don't think I can share much more than that. "If you're going to a site with remains, casual reading will not allow you, or anyone else, to discern the differences of the skeletal manifestations of periostitis, osteitis, or metaphyseal changes. That is a for instance, based wholly on one area of expertise. Even without remains, there are other areas where professionals would serve better, at the very least a 'small team' of 6. "

"Human theft and re-use are significant contributors to why objects, art, structures, and sites are damaged or disappear entirely. Serious damage by illegal digging is a major problem. Get the permits. If that isn't in your hands, then don't participate until their are permits and lobby with anyone else you are working with for the same. " Quenton closed his eyes, shifting hand to rub the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. "For the sake of the site itself, if nothing else persuades. If its a factor of money, I promise there are ways to get funding to get real experts paid from someone else's pocket or even gratis pending the conditions. No one goes into this sort of field to get rich. It's about the learning and 'adventure' if long hours over a 3x3 cube of ground per day can be called that. "

There's not much more to say or offer with no more information on what, exactly, all this is. Actual processes are at least skimmed in the books on the syllabus, even if they're for 101 classes. Imagine the 101s on a site. Even me, hardly any sort of expert other than armchair myself, yet. A brief sift through the top right-wrong drawer produced a two-pocket folder and a syllabus from each side. The packets were labeled ANTH101b Principles of Archaeology, and ANTH206 Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice, each a couple of pages and neatly stapled. They were pushed across the surface of the desk to Shale.

"No. Ignorance itself is no sin but a state of being. It can be alleviated measure by measure. We are all ignorant in our own ways. We do not know what we do not know. " On this point there was a blaze of intensity to tone and eye. As though fire hoped to kindle some spark of the same on the tundra opposite.

" Hearing this situation is that decades of advances should be thrown by the wayside in favor of luck only knows. People ignorant of actual archeology are going to go someplace that might be a real site, have real benefit and learning to be drawn from it and from what is uncovered there. No, what bothers me is that it will be harmed out of indifference to prior learning. The damage, that is the wrench. There are good reasons archeology is done as it is done now, and not the way it is shown to be done in Indiana Jones where everything is blown up and destroyed for a single trinket of gold. If there is want to dig in the first place, there should be equal want and value to preserving and drawing all that can be from a site. And from future sites that may surround. "

And what does it matter what part, really, it is that would bother me? A study in motivations? Just making conversation? Fire veiled again as the conversation swung to his hand decoration. It wasn't welcome or unwelcome, the boldness to ask again was admirable and notable, though. "I know no more about you now than the first you asked. I don't even know where you work, comparatively. Or where to find you. What fills your days, your hobbies...no more than a name, a face, a manner. Thou art no stone who sits before, and would that I tell my sorrow to. You are not attired in grave weeds, no in any way would weep, or receive my tears. If I could give more, any more, to both wrath muted and heart dumbed."

"I would tell tribunes like to these. You have a way to go yet. Even in fairytales, where quizzes pass between strangers instead of friends, the question must be asked thrice."

Quenton gave a slow nod of assent on the proposition of similarities between learning method and measure itself, dry of specialization, to the delving of archaeology. "It is a good metaphor."

Use of 'fallacy' in general conversation, and then carrying the metaphor through further conversation...skillful, and unusual. I am intrigued? Yes. Still dangerous? Definitely. Still, it would be beneficial to get out for even an hour of picnic or grill out with some human being to talk. It sounds so normal. Eating on the oval lawn. Students do it often. Invitation to guytime, by most accounting. I'm being invited to ....guytime.

" I like clean flavors that don't cloy and linger in the mouth. I don't like garlic, for that reason. It stays all day. I have no food allergies, though, and if I'm not providing the food I could hardly offer complaint about anything offered. Company and provision is unusual with my hours, other than coffee and pastries in the faculty lounges and catered graduate defenses. "

" I can bring drinks? Allergies, preferences, or religious restrictions? Do you have a phone number you can be reached at? Phone, text or email are the best ways for me in making arrangements right now. But a lunch on the lawn....would be pleasant. "