What a week it has been! The radiography and archaeology students really tore through the skeletal collection at the museum. The students had a lot of new (actually, old) techniques to learn, but they all did very well. It was fun seeing the skeletal collection again, and using it to show a new group of students something about bioarchaeology.
There were a few technical difficulties but we still got a good representative sample of the collection. On our down-time we toured the museum, which I never get tired of (fifth time for me, I think).
On Friday, Mercedes, professional archaeologist, friend, and invaluable intercontinental facilitator, managed to get us a tour of Peru’s largest nuclear reactor since they also do research in archaeometry. We rode the company bus to the outskirts of Lima where the nuclear facility was located, surrounded by the Andean foothills. We were allowed inside the pool-type reactor, right up to the water shielding us from radiation. While most of us left our cameras in dressing room before the airlock, a few in our group had tucked them into their pockets. One of our group asked if he could take some pictures of the reactor. The rest of us thought surely that we would be denied, but amazingly, our guide let him! A few of us got some cool shots of the reactor core. Wow!
Now the students are taking their newfound expertise to Ica where they will work on mummy bundles. I elected to stay here at the Villa Rica to work on my dissertation. I’m a little rusty with the research and writing since I’ve just taken my longest break in that activity since I started in January. But I got a whole bunch of articles to go over tomorrow.
I went to Miraflores today to pick up some things at Saga Falabella, one of the department stores here. I got Hanny another giant wooden prehistoric animal model (a pteranodon, not a dinosaur). I also got some shirts which were on clearance for around $10 each. No plans tomorrow, except writing and enjoying the local food.