| Entry: | This diary covers the 12th, 13th, and 14th.
The 12th was a repeat experience of the day before, which was starting to clean unit 14279 for a photo again, and again being told that even though it was ready for a photo the day before with the exception of the light, there was actually more that needed to be removed before the photo could be taken, which resulted in another day without a photo, which mean another day before the unit could be down in which I had to brush and move dirt around other people’s areas for the rest of the day.
The 13th was an off day, and I went with the trip to see the Hittite sacred spring. It was a worthwhile trip, and it was fun at the second stop being taken around a mountain village by a group of children and having them point to a site saying “Hittite, Hittite!” when a Greek inscription was in plain view (although there was one clear Hittite religious ruin in the area). The day left me quite exhausted, though, and I spent the entire time after we returned reading and sleeping, missing dinner and accidentally sleeping on until the next day.
This morning I was reassigned to trench 5 to work on excavating an area to a floor surface (part of unit 15107), and I uncovered a section of orange “under-floor” (as it has been described) and grey-floor, but the normal floor area did not seem to be present over the “under-floor.” My working hypothesis is that this area may not be in situ floor, but the edge of a second story floor collapse, leaving a floor at tilt. While prehistoric buildings are often made on slight slopes, I find the slope of the proposed floor quite hard to believe personally, although mud brick structures are far from my area of expertise and it’s quite possible that I’m wrong. After this, I moved on to sorting, bagging, and labeling finds for everyone in trench 7 for the last 30 minutes, as levels were being taken from my area and it was being photographed so that a new unit could be started tomorrow.
The team meeting this evening reminded me of problems that have occurred at projects before. The first is that everyone assumes that it takes everyone else the same time that it takes them to do something, so whenever someone does a longer version of something or, vice versa, takes a much longer time doing something, they assume the other person is screwing off instead of working. Second, that everyone assumes that what they personally value or are putting effort towards is the most important thing that people should be doing, and that people doing other things are just wasting time / screwing off, etc. Third, that meetings take about three times as long as they should when they’re fully democratic, because people tend to repeat the same point over and over again like they’re making a new one.
I think people on the team need to chill out in general. Today seemed like one of the most unnecessarily stressful days on the project, with several people raising voices and arguing over the same point endlessly in the trench where I was working, and several people complaining during the lunch break, and then people following that up by complaining about other people’s work during the meeting time. There’s a reason that the dig leader is the general channel for concerns about how the dig is progressing and who is contributing what – it’s because every random excavator who only sees part of what is going on and doesn’t necessarily understand the work going into the daily sketches, or the GIS work which hasn’t been fully put together for results to be shown yet, or the database design for a team specialist which they may not even know is happening, is not a good evaluator of the work of others.
So if someone thinks that everyone is screwing off instead of washing pots and hanging around the seminar room doing nothing, they may not realize that someone has worked a few hours overtime consistently on a project that they’re not fully aware of. So, rather than imply that other team members are free loaders during team meetings, maybe these team members should take the time to figure out exactly what’s going on. Then, they can also check the lists which are kept which record the work certain people have done and they may realize that there’s no correlation between long journal entries and absence from the pottery washing list. After that, they could follow the simple role of not assuming that because they don't know what someone else is doing, that that person is wasting time.
This is my first real entry complaining about the way other team members are approaching things, and it probably will not be the best strategy for accomplishing what I want, which is for everyone to chill out and discuss work concerns with the team leader, rather than make general accusations about people being lazy and not doing work in open team meetings, or losing their temper in the trench. Still, one thing that must be understood is that I don’t believe anyone has the right to criticize the work someone else is doing until you put some real effort into trying to understand exactly what it is they are doing. Superficial negative assessments are completely worthless, damage team morale, and set egos against each other. My advice is to lay off it.
This entry took 25 minutes to complete.Entered By: BK |
