Mustaches, Karaoke, and Whole Pots. Makes perfect sense.

It's been a fun few days out here at Mule Creek.  Last week all of the girls decided to join the men in their quest to avoid shaving for the entire field school by showing up to work in the morning with a fancy assortment of mustaches.  It's amazing what you can have shipped out here to the middle of nowhere...

Friday night, I organized a Karaoke Night for everyone at camp, and it was a great success.  Unfortunately I was too busy forcing students to sing so I didn't get any great photos of it, but we partied late into the night and I of course broke out my best rendition of 'Come Sail Away' just for the occasion.  Saturday was my first (and only!) day off during the duration of the field school, so I took advantage of it by going for a long bike ride, taking a nap, and attempting to relax.  But then I tried to run away from a dust devil and tripped over some nasty broken tent stakes and manged to seriously mangle my right big toe.  Oh well.  At least the day was mostly relaxing.

Today was probably our most exciting day in the field thus far.  Every time I think that my excavation unit can't get any cooler, it does!  Today we found... drum roll please...

A whole pot!!!!

This baby was just hanging out in our burnt room, and undoubtedly has lots of good stuff still inside of it (we don't take out the fill inside, we leave it so that the analysts back in the lab can get to the pollen and figure out what kinds of things were in there 800 years ago).  My crew and I all took turns working to dig around the vessel until we were able to easily lift it out (we also removed the nicely preserved burned roof beam next to it), and aside from a couple of cracks on one side, the whole thing was completely intact when we took it out.  These students have no idea how lucky they are to have dug some of the things we've found in this room.