We operated on a buddy system based on the doctrine of don't fall in / practice team rescue. Always carry team rescue gear, always work together to maintain safety and effect rescue.
Side note - when I first arrived and said I want ice axes (classic straight mountaineering axes) people looked at me funny.
By the time I left, the axes I procured from the field store were always filtered out into various peoples' gear kits :D
/end
...there's a *bunch* of novel safety doctrine and procedure around all of this. Especially since nobody is really doing this stuff (IIRC none working in the Australian programme any more).
This spot does highlight a key issue in some other safety doctrines I've met - in polar winter ice, relying on self rescue is tricky - because those walls of snow might be 0.5+ m tall. You're not getting out with ice spikes if you get in.
Crazily enough, a small team of us had been working in that exact thin ice channel the day before, installing some instruments to try and observe ice growth. Then de installing on whale visit day!
Somewhat nerve wracking, especially seeing a seal chew its way through while we were there. Here's a view looking away from where the whale came to say hi - a thin ice region with snow cover (a refrozen lead), surrounded by thicker, heavier ice and deeper snow.
Another wander back to 2012 and the SIPEXII expedition. At the last sampling site (unplanned, we were stuck) - we had a visit from a Minke whale!
It decided to expand a hole that a seal made the day before - in ice about 10cm thick and not quite solidly frozen - for some room to breathe. The whale hung around for quite a while, returning to this spot to grab air.
It was .. very spectacular.
#FieldworkFriday: Sometimes the smallest finds tell the biggest stories. ๐บ
Douglass et al. explore how sparse artifact scatters can reveal long-term patterns of land use. Using cases from Australia and the US, they show why documenting every the find is key.
#FieldworkFriday: Reconnecting families with ancestral homes. ๐๏ธ๐
Cheng shares collaborative work with Bunun communities in Taiwan. By combining roots-seeking trips with lidar, researchers and descendants documented former settlements in the Lakulaku River Basin. ๐บ
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-archaeological-practice/article/root-seeking-and-remote-sensing-with-the-bunun-in-the-mountains-of-taiwan/DAD59B184BA28988C118ACAF97F9ECD0
Itโs an exciting #FieldworkFriday for me today โ Iโm travelling from -2 ยฐC snow in Denmark to 22 ยฐC in Najaf, #Iraq!
Together with my colleagues Tobias Richter from Copenhagen and Jaafar Jotheri from Al Qadisiyah University, Iโll be scouting out potential sites for future fieldwork as part of #AEGIS (https://aegisearth.bio). Itโs my first time in Iraq so I cannot wait to finally see all the places Iโve been reading about since I was student!
At GeoGenetics, our cross-disciplinary research uncovers molecular clues from the past - illuminating evolution, disease, and environmental change, advancing fundamental knowledge, and driving innovative applications for todayโs world.
On this #FieldworkFriday here's a look at a Dust^2 team as they near the end of a day in the field.
Take a deeper trip into the field with Cluster member Jeff Munroe in our video series called The Collectors Tour: https://bit.ly/CollectorsTourPlaylist
Dr. ๐๏ธโ๏ธ๐บ๏ธ๐๐จโท๏ธ๐ง๐ปโโ๏ธ๐ถ
Adv in Archaeological Practice
J.
Joe Roe
Dust^2