Good morning to the herd.
As many of you know, blue jersey dad and I have been on the road doing archaeological field and lab work since the middle of May. We were in Hawai’i for a bit over three weeks working with the Native Hawaiian community and doing some archaeological survey of the Na Wai ‘Eha (the four waters) area. The regions has been the subject of long-term litigation over water rights, and recently a portion of the area has been preserved from development. In early historic times this would have been a rich agricultural region with irrigated taro patches, many of which were reserved for royalty. Here is a view of the coastline nearly:
While we were in Hawai’i. we learned that we had received a grant to do some archaeological work in the Middle East. We had three days at home after the Hawaiian project before we had to leave home again–just long enough to do our laundry, cut the grass, buy cat food, and pick up our Turkish research visas. We were able to combine the Turkish field work with a couple of conferences in Ukraine and Israel and an ongoing project in Armenia. We were gone for just over 6 weeks, and here was our itinerary:
JFK to Dnepropetrovsk (via Frankfort and Vienna); Dnepropetrovsk to Istanbul; Istanbul to Tel Aviv and back; Istanbul to Kayseri (Turkey) and back; Istanbul to Yerevan, Armenia (via Kiev); Yerevan to Dnepropetrovsk (via Moscow); and Dnepropetrovsk to JFK (via Vienna). We made it back in one piece.