Well. . . .throwing away artifacts. And sand. And gravel. And junk. It’s the heavy fraction of flotation samples from Egypt, 1988. I did my MA project on most of it (I should find the files and publish them online somewhere, hmmmmm…), but other than that I’ve been schlepping it around for the last 20-odd years in about 9 boxes weighing several hundred pounds. Nobody wants it, so I am discarding it. How, I don’t know quite yet. It’s all bagged and tagged so I’m just dumping it all out into a container outside but what to do once that’s done is up in the air. It’s got a lot of pot sherds in it, a small amount of bone and shell, and lots and lots of gravel.
I think first I’ll put it up on Craigs list and see if a local school might have a use for it: Egyptian dirt from the time of the pyramids! Dig in it for artifacts! I suppose I could parcel it out and sell it somewhere. . . .Have your own bag of Pyramid-age dirt — with artifacts! — from Egypt! Otherwise, I’ll find a nice spot in the yard and create a tasteful Egypt-themed landscaping area and dump it there.
Anyone else have any ideas?
UPDATE: At least one teacher or school admin is interested!
A local grade school is a great idea. Any science museums near you? They might be interested, especially those that run summer/holiday camps and have other programs for kids.
Comment by Kristina Killgrove — November 29, 2011 @ 12:21 pm
Ha! The Museum is the one that dumped them back on me because they didn’t want it. . . .
I’m going to try to school idea first though. There’s enough here that I could probably divvy it up between several, if they’re interested.
Comment by acagle — November 29, 2011 @ 12:46 pm
Project MICRO SANDBOX:
http://www.microscopy.org/education/projectmicro/SandCollection.cfm
Comment by eef — November 29, 2011 @ 12:49 pm
Or you could package it up and sell it as excavation kits. You could get a little cottage industry going there. I would have bought a bunch as a kid. Heck, I might buy a bunch now…
Comment by Kristina Killgrove — November 29, 2011 @ 1:23 pm
Micro-Sandbox: Well, one Ziploc bag will take care of approximately 1/100,000 of it. . . .but I’ll probably still do it!
That’s an idea, I’ll buy a snotload of little toy trowels from China, make up a goofy little Excavation Manual, and sell a kit for $35 each plus Shipping and Handling. And then use the proceeds to finance a trip to Egypt once a year to get more. Yeah, Fortune and Glory(tm) await!
Comment by acagle — November 29, 2011 @ 1:43 pm
I’d actually love to have a Ziploc full of it. Seriously, it’d be pretty neat to have. Couple years back I bought my wife a necklace of paleolithic beads. This would go quite nicely with it, especially with identifiable potsherds.
Comment by Rusty — November 29, 2011 @ 10:18 pm
Have you gotten rid of it yet? How heavy do you think it is? It might be of interest to us here, even with its mini potsherds (how large are they?). There might be a possibility of undergraduate research on it. I don’t know where we’d store it, though…
Comment by Sara — December 2, 2011 @ 11:01 pm
All still here, though some interest (and requests) from local schools already. It’s pretty heavy stuff because it’s mostly fine gravel and coarse sand. Sherds vary from tiny to ca. 7 cm long.
Comment by acagle — December 3, 2011 @ 4:32 pm