An adventure begins

One day, I was watching television. You get home after a hard day of dealing with and solving all the exciting problems that people manage to dream up. You have some dinner and, in an effort to avoid having to spend time with your family, you sit down in front of some moving pictures and become absorbed in the stories they tell. Most of the stories are not very interesting. Usually it’s about some pack of arseholes who are trying kill another pack of arseholes, while a third pack of arseholes looks on to work out which of the first two packs of arseholes are going to win, so they can say they were supporting that pack of arseholes and look, as it were, less arseholey. Maybe sometimes you’ll find a game show. Game shows are, by and large, devoid of arseholes. Naturally, the networks saw this vacancy and declared an opportunity, and thus was “Reality Television” born. Or maybe it’ll be a lifestyle show. This is where they tell you about all these awesome things (make great food, renovate your house, clean up your garden) knowing full well you’ll never do it because you really don’t have a clue, and that you’ll spend stupid amounts of money at their sponsors store proving just that.

Occasionally, though, you find gold.

I found myself channel surfing, and arriving on the ABC (Australia’s government sponsored television network), and a show came on. It was called Time Team – a show produced for Channel 4 in the UK. This is a show about a team of real archaeologists who traipse the length and breadth of the British Isles (and sometimes, the Caribbean) looking for sites of historical interest buried under the dirt. Hosted by Sir Tony Robinson for nearly 20 seasons, it was a revelation about history.

Carenza Lewis, Sir Tony and Phil Harding. Apparently, the Somme was also like this.

I’ve always been interested in history, specifically the medieval period, and I have a soft spot for castles. So I watched, and I was hooked. It was the way they didn’t just give us a dry idea of what they found, but they also attempted to put everything in to the context of a story. Who lived there, why did they live there, and why did they spend so much of their lives dumping broken pottery into holes? I found the whole thing fascinating and, what is more, I actually began to study this field outside of the show. I’ll post more on that later.

Now, I know what you are thinking. “Dinosaurs! Cool!”. Now let me just stop you there by repeatedly punching you in the face really hard. Archaeology is not about dinosaurs. Oh, you might be lucky and find something from the paleolithic in a trench, but archaeology is about human civilisation. Where we came from, where we headed in the future and, very importantly for a lot of archaeologists, which pub we are headed to in the future. Also, archaeologists almost never have to deal with Nazis, Indian death cult leaders and Russian telepaths. This is a misnomer created by Hollywood. Except for being chased by a huge rolling boulder. I’ve been told it’s a natural hazard of field archaeology.

Was digging and looking for lost Sankara stones. So technically an archaeologist.

What’s this leading up to, you ask? Why am I reading this when I could be looking at funny cat pictures? Well, in a month I am going to experience field archaeology for the first time. On the other side of the world. In the south west of England. In a little place called Ipplepen. The main image accompanying this post is a view of Ipplepen I pulled off the internet, in fact. This blog is for me to record my experiences and thoughts leading up, during and after this trip of a life time. You may want to visit occasionally, or not.