A New Culture

The Honey Bee site is on the NW side of Tucson. It is a huge Hohokam site being excavated by Desert Archaeology,Inc. under the expertise of Henry W.

I was invited to join in the dig as time had run out on the contract and volunteers were needed to complete some of the pithouse work.

The main large crew had been there for a long time, about 6 months. They had a dig amenity I am not used to, namely a porta-potty; a blue chemical portable toilet.

Well, I needed to try the porta potty--coffee you know!

Usually, when one leaves the dig area one slips their trowel into the back pocket of their jeans so it will not to get covered up or lost.

You guessed it! My trowel fell in the toilet!

I thought and said to myself, "Damn! Oh Well. I have another."

But when I got back to the dig area I decided to let Henry know this had happened so he could warn the Honey Wagon Crew. I sure didn’t want that trowel piercing the hoses and all the other attendant problems to happen that entered my thoughts. Not pretty!

This mishap occured on a Saturday. Henry said the Honey Crew had cleaned out the porta potty late Friday afternoon and it should be fairly clean as no one had been working but us.

I thought I said it quietly to Henry but I have a voice that carries and one of the Grad students said, “Lets retrieve it. I’ll make a tool to get it out.”

I told Henry I had another trowel and forget it.

As I scraped away I was missing my favorite trowel, a nice Marshalltown 54-- thin, sharp but well rounded on the tip.

So I said, “Ok. Lets get it”

The grad student ran to get a stick with a curved, bifurcated end and then we walked to the porta-pot.

Lid up! Low and behold! The trowel was floating in a vertical fashion, handle up so retrieval was easy and sans tool (stick).

But now it was blue. Metal shaft and wooden handle all blue!

One of the grad students commented, “Someday hence, a blue trowel will be found by an Archaeologis; analysis will determine it to be from the "Home Depot Culture" and this one, of course, ceremonial based on its blue color!”