Woman vs. Desert

When I agreed to be the assistant surveyor this year, I knew it was going to be physically demanding—my afternoon poling sessions with Dawn, my now-boss, wore me out like nothing else last year. But after a week of hiking back and forth across our site in the blazing sun, I can officially say I have never felt so tired in my life. There are perks, though. Allegedly a tight pair of pants will fit just fine after two weeks of this stuff.

At the beginning of every day, Dawn and I set up the total station, which is a machine that shoots lasers at a prism (which is fixed to the top of a pole) and records the location of the point where the prism is situated. Because our site is mapped onto a grid that is based on a handful of fixed points, you have to set up the total station directly above one of the known points, then take a reading at a second known point, before new points can be mapped in accurately. These fixed points basically span the central part of our site, so getting from one of them to another can involve lots of hiking.



Setting up the total station is a real challenge because to ensure accuracy, it must be leveled directly above the fixed point from which you would like to determine new points. Our machine has a red laser beam that can be pointed at the ground to show how far off we are. Fixed points at the site are marked by metal rings set into the ground, some of which are set in concrete. The first step in preparing the total station is to situate the tripod as directly above a fixed point as possible, while also keeping the tripod level. There is a hole to look through, and I drop three pebbles from directly below the hole to see where they land. If they all land off to the side, I adjust the tripod. If I hear three satisfying thunks of rock hitting metal ring, I grab the actual machine and screw it onto the platform.

After that, the total station must be completely leveled to ensure accuracy. Level has to be checked repeatedly during the day, because wind, a careless bump into the tripod, or even the malevolent rays of the sun can throw everything off. This morning we had to re-do our setup because the temperature went up so quickly that it knocked the station out of whack. Apparently there are machines out there that can automatically level themselves and find fixed points without human intervention, but they cost about $50k.

Since we won't be spending that kind of money anytime soon, I have had to practice setting up the station every day after we come back from site. Anafora has a sandy "garden" area filled with slightly disturbing papier maché animals, where I have been setting up the machine and then taking it back down, much to the amusement of both the Egyptian church groups that come through and my fellow archaeologists. Sometimes I look up to see groups of girls (at Anafora on some kind of retreat) sitting on the front porch and staring at me, or catch my friends from the dig giving me knowing looks because setting up the total station is notoriously frustrating. Hanging out in a giant Noah's ark setup makes my work more entertaining, however. Check out this elephant made of cement bags! I reached out to touch it gently, which caused a couple of panicked birds to come flying out. I have not repeated my mistake.



Dawn's and my current project is topographical mapping of our site, which means that one of us stays at the total station while the other "poles," or holds the prism level so that the person at the total station can aim at it—there are crosshairs and everything—and shoot the point. I confess I have allowed myself to utter the occasional "pew! pew!" when about to fire a laser beam at the prism. The person with the pole walks in lines across the desert, stopping every five meters, to create a kind of grid pattern across the sand. Our toe lines from a few days ago are still partially visible, and it's somewhat satisfying to look over all of that work! Unfortunately, our walkie talkies are dead, so we have had to communicate over long distances with a combination of arm waving and text messages. I am so glad I bought that cell phone last weekend!

Speaking of Egyptian cell phones, they all seem to come with a particularly useful feature—a flashlight. We have begun to suspect that this is a logical response to frequent power outages, because the power has already gone out multiple times this week!