Dig Diary: I paid for this you know!
Some people just don't take to the whole digging thing.
Monday 13th August 2002
An introductory tour of the archaeology site from the Supervisor left me panicked. What the hell was a tesserae? Why was she calling me an imbracie? Was I supposed to have revised for this? Arrgh, let me go home. I feel a fraud, standing here with my brand new pointy trowel in my back pocket.
Along with all the other sweaty first-timers I was shown what buckets were, what a wheelbarrow looked like and why knees are important. He said he wanted us to dig like 'this', not like 'this'. We all looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Nazi bastard!
The excavation site was fifty metres square, making it one of the largest excavations in the country. This was the 30th week of people digging in the same location (a section of Insula IX if you must know; - Yeah, I was still none the wiser). In all that time the 'hole' (technical term) hadn't dropped much below one metre from the current surface level. Pathetic, they should get Tony Robinson in with a JCB like on telly.
In the afternoon, the Roman gods turned the thermostat up from pleasantly warm to miserably hot. Well, its too hot to start working I thought, but apparently not and I was assigned to 'defining and cleaning a cut' of a roadside trench. Defining a cut? what did they mean by that? There I sat, dripping acidic sweat all over what might be genuine archaeology, gingerly poking at bits of stone with the shiny point of my trowel in the hope that I wasn't destroying anything priceless.
My first 'find' was a 2 by 2 centimetre of red pottery, which I added to the finds tray for my context. This was promptly taken away from me and off to the finds hut by someone who had a clue. I was left with nothing but backache, knee-ache, headache and a fear that the other bits of the red pot had probably ended up in my bucket and been thrown on the spoil heap.
It was only in the evening that I plucked up the courage to ask someone what 'Insula' actually meant. He was also a beginner and didn't know, so we went together to find a supervisor who told us... No, I don't think so, you find out for yourself.
Tuesday 14th August 2002
The morning was taken up by a series of lectures, the most memorable being David Sim's talk on Roman arms and armour. David showed us how experimental archaeology can really add to our understanding of past cultures. More importantly, we were given the opportunity to try wielding gladius swords and shout 'unleash hell' at each other, just like Russell Crowe. 20 fat Maximuses, huffing and puffing up and down the field hacking at each other with various bits of Roman weaponry. Had Claudius invaded with troops like us at his disposal, the history of this island would have run very differently.
Someone must have realised that I hadf begun to enjoy myself and decided to put a stop to it. I was made to spend the afternoon washing mud.
Sometimes (but rarely), when the mud dissolved I found things beneath it. These were mostly pieces of 'CBM' (ceramic building material) or 'tiles' as normal people call them. Why archaeologists need three letter acronyms is anyone's guess? I got to wash Samian ware, Silchester Ware, White Ware, Alice Holt Ware and New Forest Black Burnished Ware. Gosh it was exciting... honest!
During the afternoon I was shown how the tegulae (large flat pieces) and imbrices (curved sections to cover joins between tegulae) of a Roman roof slotted together. That was too much and I had to go and lie down in a damp tent for a bit.
Wednesday 15th August 2002
I had my first experience of planning a context. Planning is like drawing pictures, except it's shit and nobody likes what you draw.
I was given a quick refresher on the standard planning conventions (a single dot-dash for limits of excavations, double dot-dashes for edges of intrusions, smudgy bits when you can really be bothered; etc.)I was sent off with a grid frame, string, ruler and blunt pencil.
Now the grid frame is a large heavy square of metal with knotty bits of string attached. It has two purposes. Firstly, it makes an excellent ambush device. Anybody with a wheelbarrow will walk over it without seeing it, trip on the strings and deposit a hundred kilos of mud all over someone's planning area. Have you ever seen archaeologists duel with trowels? It can get nasty. The second use of a grid frame is so that other people can come back later and see just how shite your drawing is. Bastards.
Of course as soon as you are finished planning someone else comes along and digs up the bit you drew anyway, so your drawing becomes the only remaining record of what once wasthere and any mistakes you make are recorded 'as fact' in perpetuity. I guess I should now appologise to future archaeologists who may well ponder my pebbles with smiley faces on them in years to come.
I had to add spot heights to my drawing; taking backsight readings calculated from the permanent level on the Church wall about a mile away from the dig. Why we are trusting the church authorities to know our height above sea level escapes me.
In the evening, we all went down to the amphitheatre to recreate the atmosphere of the place (alright, to get pissed). I wanted to make an effort, so I decided to come costumed as a native warrior. I stripped naked and covered myself in a tin of blue emulsion (how do you make woad in the 21st Century?) I had envisaged us all having some mock battles and then perhaps throwing some of the more irritating archaeologists to whatever might pass for a lion in these parts but the others volunteers were all still fully dressed and had decided to just play frisbee instead. Strangely, nobody threw the frisbee to me all evening.
Thursday 16th August 2002
I was asked to assign and plan a group context for the entire east-west road ditch I had first encountered on Monday afternoon. This entailed collating and checking work done by other people in previous weeks and years. This, like many aspects of archaeology, is a painstaking process where accuracy, care and double-checking are prerequisites for success.
I couldn't be arsed, so I made it all up, nicked some stuff from the finds tray and headed into Reading to sell it at the Car Boot sale on Market Street.
History of Roman Britain by Peter Sallway reviewed