Final thoughts or ode to an archaeologist..

Duncan said yesterday that I was essentially an archaeologist in training. I have given this much thought over the past 12 hours. I thought on it twice in the night when I awoke in pain, rubbing ibuprofen into my sore muscles.

So, what has my training taught me? I'd like to discuss tools. Being my father's daughter in this respect, I feel it is necessary to begin here.
The spade.
I can see how some people may name their spade or be overly possessive. There are many 'spade' considerations, I can dig with ease, yet can I throw soil forward with it? It's light enough to wield above my head in a 1.5m pit, yet is it short enough to turn round and throw the soil out over into the sky above. So many reasons to love one's spade! I became attached to one of Duncan's spades! I'll call him Leonard.

Trowel.
Love it, but it needs to be pointed enough to flick a 'find' out, not too sharp as to scratch it (or yourself as my bleeding fingers will tell you) and flat enough on one side to scrape a nice flat area. Love a good trowel me!

The bad of archaeology..
Being a novice, I clearly fell into the trap of 'student archaeology behaviour'. This caused much amusement to Fran, who snorted away at my frowned upon 'poor site' etiquette. Never have I seen Duncan's brow furrow as much as when I stuck a bit of soggy green board down and sat in the middle of the pit. Bad archeology behavior. Bad! Also it is very naughty to dig down to the next level. But if something juicy is sticking out of the ground, practically winking at me, how do you control yourself. How?!! I know Duncan, you just do.

Bad behavior aside, I enjoyed my training. Not expecting a good trainee award or a star but hope I was passable in places. But anyone who knows me (I'm sorry for you) knows the tools are the thing. Give me a fab spade, a big fat headed matic and a perfect trowel and I'm away!

So, my hat goes off to you archeologists. You dig like demons, producing tonnes (literally) of soil, you crouch down on your haunches (which burns so badly!) for hours. You draw natty detailed sketches, record like CSI and to top it off, with your bleeding, calloused, chillblained fingers, have to fill the damn thing back in again!

So hats off to you. This is where my training ends.

Other moments from the day....

Thanks to all the parents and children. Felicity, Natasha, Fran(tastic), Amelia and Joanne for being fabulous mums! Beba, Jet and Min for looking stylish whilst clambering through mud. Sloane for his love of tools...and mud, kit and Rudi for enthusiasm, lleweylln for his muscles, Ed for his lovely smile, Nathaniel for being a lovely grey bear, Charlie for his on site assessments and health and safety updates, and finally ....AJ and Noah for attempting archaoelogy as Batman and Robin. ;)

After-dark backfilling - Less fun than it looks!

After a full day where we hit the natural sand at a depth of about 1.5m, and recording the section in the last light of the day, we had to backfill the trench.  My real job intrudes tomorrow, and I don't have the luxury of a leisurely backfill.  Heigh-ho.  I think we might have broken Maggie.

Less fun than it looks!

Anyone recognise this?

Approx 6cm in length, clear glass with 'HGB 2' on the base. It has a red, thick, paste-like lining. It would have had a screw cap at some point. Could it be a drug bottle? Any thoughts welcome.

Mosaic

The finished mosaic. Thanks for all of your effort. This contains pre-19th century soil, authentic!

Roughly 1.4m down, feels like we've possibly hit a natural. Give it to 2m? Time's running out!

Cut our losses??

Pre 19th century approx 1m down. Still hitting hill wash.....

Features so far....

Pet grave (bird), slot foundation for a wooden shed and a plant pit.

0.6 of a metre down, still in the 19th century. Keep on going!

Something interesting??

Another find

First bit of possible Roman pottery Samian ware.

First finds...

A fragment of Bridgewood pottery.

Arty kids....

Noah and Jet are starting their bowls. The mosaic is underway....beautiful Beba!

And we're off.....

Duncan explaining what his young archaeologists need to do.

A friend and neighbour has kindly shared what she and her husband unearthed six doors down.

When digging a flat area in the garden, they came across 46 of the bottles photographed below. Their detective skills and research has show they were possibly water/gin bottles of German origin made from 1700s to the beginning of the 20th century.

Why 46 gin bottles in their garden?? Although a party pad it may have been (for it remains that way), the more likely story they think, is that the area was used for livestock and the bottles created a rise in ground temperature.

I wonder if anything similar lurks in our pit?

Thank you Catriona for sharing your finds.

De-turfing

On a sunny and warm Sunday afternoon I set to work preparing the garden for tomorrow's fun.  In consultation with the owners of the garden we agreed the best placement for the test-pit. 

The garden is a narrow one, so there wasn't much debate!  One potential obstacle is drains and other services, so we looked for man-holes and drains in the vicinity.  

After that I laid out the trench, measuring 1.5m by 1m.  At this stage the youngsters were in the house and therefore missed a no-doubt gripping lecture on geometric principles and the hypotenuse of a right triangle (1.414m for a 1m x 1m square, since you ask).

De-turfing was a simple enough affair with my trusty Lidl spade, during which the first finds were recovered (See Maggie's post).  A nice assemblage of lost toys, sweet wrappers, flower pot fragments, a clothes peg spring, 19th/20th Century pottery fragments and brick rubble was soon collected; all good evidence of use of the space as a garden (no surprises there).

I also dug an exploratory slot at one end of the test-pit to get some handle on how deep the deposits were likely to be and to make sure there were no nasty surprises like electical cables.  Beneath the topsoil and turf was a deposit of orangy brown gravelly sand from which I recovered some brick and a post-medieval pottery fragment.  

Beneath that, at a depth of 0.45m, was a very cobbly orangy brown clay and sand deposit.  The geology of the area is very similar, being made up of glacial moraine deposits, but it was clear that this was a disturbed deposit and therefore potentially archaeological.  

Initial signs look extremely promising and I can't wait to get stuck into it with the children and parents tomorrow!

Until then...

Preparation begins....

Duncan de-turfing the test pit. No dead bodies yet! We have been fortunate enough to find this plastic treasure so far!

Recreating the owl mosaic

Duncan assures me there were NO neon/ fluro dyes used in the production of Roman mosaic tiles. More's the pity! Prep for large mosaic ready, children will be able to glue in the squares to complete the huge tile! I plan to ask each individual child to make leaves or birds (depending on ability) that will be cut out and added to the final tile.

Managing expectations

For our initial Holgate Garden Archaeology/Art Project test pit, this is what I hope we find:

This is what we will probably find:

Time to start managing expectations.

HGAP

Holgate Garden Archaeology Project = H-GAP.  Do you see what I did there...?

Demographics in archaeology?
No?
OK, no more puns.

Virtual Vessels

I have 'virtually' turned my pot, fired it and prep done for the images. Now, how do I do the rest?!

I'm sure I'll get there. Quicker to make a real one!

Tooling up

Starting to tool up for the inaugural test-pit of the Holgate Garden Archaeology/Art Project.  I'm doing the archaeology and Maggie's supervising the art.  I'm off to the shed to dig out as many small child-sized trowels I can find.  Getting excited!

Bring the past to life.

Duncan is getting ready for the dig, and I'm busy preparing the art side of the project. We will be running three separate activities. The first will be to lay a large piece of paper next to the dig and the children will record the findings as they arrive. We will be looking at typical pottery that may be found, the children will recreate their own paper pots and paper plates using visual stimulus. We will be using a pottery app to also make some fun pots on the iPad! Lastly we will be creating a large mosaic. This will consist of one shared mosaic tile of an owl (see attached) and surrounded by the children's own creations. Watch this space!