The Balk Walk

July 20

Today Stephanie assigned our whole team to focus on an initial target of taking down another partial wall.  The task was heavy and demanding because the wall was constructed of many quite heavy boulders, some of which were too heavy to carry and had to be broken up with a sledgehammer.  We all spent the first couple of hours lifting and carrying rocks and debris to the dump, or dirt to Cassandra who was assigned to the sieve.  At times the balks became quite congested with workers coming and going – the person carrying a full guffah always had the right of way.  I have explained previously how the dig site is marked out and excavated.  We work in separate 5 meter squares and between each square there is a one meter walkway left unexcavated to allow workers to have access to individual squares and to the overall site.  These walkways are called “balks”.  As the excavation progresses, the steady traffic on these balks often makes them deteriorate.  Some of the edges begin to loosen and give way, big rocks appear and walking on them becomes increasingly hazardous.  At appropriate stages in the excavation these balks are eventually taken down to fully expose all of the walls and other built structures in the squares.

As we carried our loads this morning we were using a balk whose side had partially collapsed, and then we had to cross another area on top of an exposed wall.  The work required a good sense of balance, careful eyesight and an attentive vestibular system.  It helped to have navigated the balk a few times to determine just where the footing was safe and which rocks were a bit loose and likely to send you sprawling down 6 feet into the square below while carrying a 40 pound boulder.  To an onlooker the line of bodies progressing back and forth across the balk would have offered an intriguing sight.  Individuals would be seen making sudden random athetoid-like waving movements of the arms, interspersed with an occasional ballistic fling.  The upright body would sometimes contort with a sudden sideways lean or forward flexion and there was no regular bipedal rhythm to placement of the feet – timing and step length were irregular and unexpected. 

I considered naming this spectacle at Umayri as the Archaeologist’s Dance, or simply the Balk Dance, but finally settled on calling it the Balk Walk.  I wondered what the reception might be if I were to introduce it to a Hollywood night club.  From what I have seen on the occasional video the Balk Walk seemed to have much in common with what happens on the typical night club dance floor.  But I quickly realized that the chaotic movements of the Balk Walk could never synchronize with the regular pounding beat from the band - the movements of the Balk Walk are so spontaneous, arbitrary, erratic, haphazard, aimless, inconsistent, arrhythmic and un-choreographed that patrons just would not buy it.  They would simply stay with what they had – varying patterns of obscene gyrations as they participate in a rude public display of virtual sex.