Pictures of the Day: Jackalope

The archaeology class at Harding meets at an awesome dig site that was created by the professor who teaches the class. It was a large endeavor but an amazing accomplishment. He recreated three different eras that were then covered in dirt and turned into an archeaological dig site that is slowly being uncovered. Everything is scaled down and is a model of ancient cities.

Here is my group's site before we started digging:

That is the wall the classes before us uncovered.

It is always exciting to find something. My group found a wall on the next layer down and a broken clay oil lamp. One day we were getting really desperate and I found something in the ground and I began to "articulate" it or basically spend tons of time carefully picking away dirt from an object that might have significance to it. 

I realized quickly that I was in fact articulating a root, but that did not stop me from just pulling it out of the site and throwing it in the bucket to be hauled away. Instead I worked really hard to clear all the dirt away from it as though it was a precious artifact and I was Indiana Jones.

This is what I had carefully uncovered:

Once I had completely articulated it and it remained in the plot I showed my professor. This is roughly the conversation that followed.

Me: Look at what I found!
Professor: Do you think that is an artifact?
Me: Maybe.
Pro: Well then what do you think it is?
Me: Well if everything is scaled down then I think its a Jackalope.
Pro:....................

And so I was supposed to take the "root" and throw it out, but instead I kept it and it rides in my car. My brother stepped on it and broke the horns off but maybe one day I'll glue it back together, because that's what Archaeologists do.

By the way the Jackalope is a mythological animal that's a mix between a Jackrabbit and the horns of an Antelope. When I went to Wyoming as a child my dad convinced me that they existed.