Dear Diary,
Today I found myself sandwiched between a pretty 2o year old Asian girl and a pretty 20 year old Romanian girl who have no issues at all getting dirty.
Those of you know me well, know that I’m going for the cheap laughs here. I know what you’re thinking. We have to stoop to this so early on because he needs filler for the blog entry. And to be honest, I have do some filling because of the lack of photographic evidence I am able to provide for the dig itself. This will be explained as I go along. If you want some of the official photography of the blog, you can review it at the Ippleplen Archaeology Blog for 2015
I awoke early, as always. I packed the stuff I had laid out the night before (forgetting the gloves and pens like a damned fool), and then waited around untik 7am when it was time to talk to my family and tell them about the previous day. I am positive they were thrilled by my account of laundry. But really, I was champing at the bit to get out there.
The dig was supposed to start at 9am. Ok, so I was here in Paignton and I had to go there in Ipplepen. I knew the map well enough, and having experienced it and the circuitous route via Totnes, coupling it with the knowledge that it was a Monday morning peak hour, I figured it would take me about an hour fifteen to get there, so I should leave at 7:45am. How wrong it was.
I arrived onsite approximately 20 minutes after I left, after my GPS took me through all of the exciting narrow laneways in that part of the country. Arriving at the gate, I opened this boundary to a private property, and proceeded cautiously up the driveway after closing it behind me. Naturally, the anxiety that I was in completely the wrong place was in my head, when I arrived at a crossroads. Ahead went the driveway to the farmhouse, left and right were paddocks, and in the paddock…. a digger, still sitting on its truck. This had to be the place.
People arriving and getting set up
After parking the car, I found that apart from the digger driver, I was the first person onsite. There was a caravan in the field opposite , so I assumed I would be ok the park there (I was later to learn that it was an official caravanning site and that I wasn’t to park there, but I wasn’t the only one to be confused by this). I had a brief chat with the dig driver before others started arriving and began asking the same questions (“Is this the dig?”, “Where can I park?”, “Are you really an underwear model?”). The students were late from the campground, because their minibus had not turned up. Finally, people that knew what was going on finally began to arrive, and everyone assembled in the finds tent.
We were introduced to the project leads- Professor Stephen Rippon, who was leading the site, Danielle Wooton, who works for the British Museum in Devon and manages all the stuff that is found, and Dr John Davey, a cheery curly haired fellow whom I realised was the one who gave me directions when I was at the University a few days earlier. So, I’d already managed to make myself look like an idiot before I could even turn over a single sod.
We introduced ourselves, myself as the lone Australian. This proved an interesting choice, as I was inevitably asked two things by different people during the course of the dig. “Where in Australia?” and “Who is going to win the Ashes?” – and invariably, my answer was “Melbourne” and “I didn’t even know they were on.”
This is true. I couldn’t say “Langwarrin” because people would just nod as if they knew, and I really know nothing about cricket – the Captain is Michael Clarke and there’s a Watson in there somewhere is about the extent of my knowledge.
It’s an automatic 10-15 years for not knowing Adam Gilchrists’ batting average in Australia.
We were divided into teams A, B, C , D and E on a rotating schedule. Team A, my team, was to be excavating a newly dig Trench 9. Geophysics, the science of using magnetometry, ground penetrating radar and standing around a lot looking perplexed, had identified an feature surrounded by concenctric circles, and so a trench had been dug to identify exactly what was there.
Trench 9 – Freshly dug, unexcavated and ready to unveil who knows what?
Team A was divided into groups of twos and threes (there were about 50 people all told), and nice fellow called Neil, a third year student at the University was paired with me and we started at the closest edge of the trench in the picture above, working our back in a process known as cleaning. The idea is to remove maybe the top 2 or 3 millimetres of dirt from the top, moving backwards along the trench. This allows you to see the relative colours of the soil, which help you assess which soil is undisturbed, which has been dig out and refilled, and other aspects. It was not long before I had my first find.
Samianware, or rather the cheaper local equivalent
Yes, I know you’re thinking. “Yay! Dirt!” – but the orange coloured deposit is a piece of the local version of the same stuff (Oxfordshire-ware or something, I think the archaeologists called it). In hindsight, I should have put a coin beside it to show the size, but it’s about the size of an Australian 10cent coin, or a UK 50p coin. The point is, that I was the first person to see and touch this piece of pottery since it was smashed some 1,400 years ago. Think of it. 1400 years, and for some reason, however bizarre, you feel you now have a personal connection to a human being who lived here that long ago, and more importantly, is more than likely buried less that 50 meters from where you are now kneeling. Excuse my French, but that’s a mind-fucking thought.
So much has happened in that 1,400 years. William the Conqueror invaded. The Magna Carta was signed. The Spice Girls reach number one on the charts. You can feel that history flowing from the landscape, it’s a feeling you can’t get from reading about it, or watching TV, or really even touring around castles and so forth. You get from seeing the lives of ordinary people, trying to eke out a living from the hills, trading with their allies, killing their enemies, and at some point, a child knocks a prized earthernware dish from a table, smashing it on slate floor. The child is reprimanded, and the shards tossed into a pit or boundary trench, his parents never knowing that some day some scruffy old decrepit man from a part of the world that did not exist to them, would be gazing down on those sherds and wondering who they were.
Later in the afternoon, I was paired up with Melissa (the Asian Girl) and Christina (the Romanian girl) to clean up another part of the same trench. There were what appeared to be the shadows of post holes in the ground, but more than that was just speculation (Victorian field boundary? Roman Temple? Alien Monolith?), and soon as things began to dry out the holes disappeared. The day wore on as I worked between Melissa and Christina, and we were all working so hard and were so intent on what we were doing that barely a word was spoken between us. Clearly, I was having too much fun to paying attention to icky girls.
The day ended around 4:30 with most of the trenches cleaned and marked out for what the supervising archaeologists wanted to do with the trench features over the coming weeks. It’s a very fluid thing to do, however, since any one discovery can drastically alter the course of the whole dig.
I went back to my lodgings elated. This was what I had come here for. And I was finally doing it. Not even the prospect of mud and dust going to stop me.
Please note that there are not many photos of the dig, due to the policies of the university and really, it being the right thing to do given some of the sensitive content. I don’t necessarily agree with the policies, but I understand and respect their intent. Suffice to say, over the following 4 days, I have seen and touched and experienced things that will live forever within my mind, until such time as dementia and syphilis destroy them.