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Escaping the Storm Clouds

Folkestone Research & Archaeology Group: Finalising our First Newsletter & Exploring the Downs

By on July 6, 2012 in Archaeological Prospection, Community Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Education, Publishing

We set up the Folkestone Research and Archaeology Group in January this year, having met on a recent dig in the area. Realising that there was no local group in existence, we set about creating one. Since we started, we have engaged in a number of activities and also hold monthly meetings. We decided that a regular newsletter would update any of our members who were unable to join in some of the activites and also to help promote our group to anyone who is interested.

Our editor composed our first newsletter, and on The Day of Archaeology, a few of us met up to finalise the content for distribution the next day.  We also had a good chin-wag over upcoming events. The newsletter can now be viewed on our website here.

A day later, one of our members came up with the bright idea of taking a walk “up the downs” (dont you just love that term?) on Sunday. Other than being a bit of a social event, we also wanted to explore the locations of a number of barrows that we may be able to excavate at a later date.  As usual, the bright sunny day (as predicted by the weather forecasters) turned out to be “unsettled”, with us having to wait for the heavy showers to abate before setting off.

Walking over the downs, we located a number of the barrows we were looking for, whilst also enjoying the views. We covered the area we wanted to explore, with intermittent sunny spells and rain showers. We then noticed some black clouds ominously advancing towards us, so took the shortest route (the road) back to the pub, with cattle racing along in the field next to us, also trying to avoid the oncoming storm. Thankfully, we made it back, just in time, before the rain and hail began their assault.  Over a Guinness, our chairman had a quick chat with the pub landlord about conducting a dig in their beer garden, whilst the rest of us discussed the training dig we have starting in a member’s garden this coming weekend.  It looks like we could be a busy group in the near future.

Escaping the Storm Clouds

Escaping the storm clouds and the deluge to come

 

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No Shovel at All – A Day in Pictures

By on July 5, 2012 in Archaeological Prospection, Education, Expeditions, Museum Archaeology, Prehistory

Today many people know that archaeologist around the world usually don’t work in pits with a shovel in their hand every day. What many people yet don’t know is that there are days in the professional life of an archaeologist in which he holds not even a single find in his hands and in which he doesn’t think of finds and reconstructing past lifeways at all.

I’ve graduated from the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz with a degree in Prehistory. Currently I’m working at the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Center and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution. This amazing institute is the place where I spent my Day of Archaeology 2012 without a shovel or even a single find.

In the morning I administrated MONREPOS’ social networking accounts (twitter, facebook, Google+) and informed myself about new posts of people the institute follows. I also tweeted about our own activities, organizing several excavations for the summer.

 

One of these field projects is the Lower Danube Survey for Paleolithic Sites. Together with collaborating institutes we will be conducting excavations at a newly discovered Lower Paleolithic site in Romania called Dealul Guran. As we are still looking for participants to join this year’s campaign I designed an information flyer and aupdated the project’s website.

 

Since I will be working in the field myself I had to book a flight from Frankfurt to Bucharest and back.

Just like in other professions, archaeologists have their spleens too. This time my fellow graduate students and I agreed in the need of buying special trowels for the above mentioned fieldwork in Romania. So we gathered around a computer and purchased some equipment that deemed us to be indispensable for a successful summer.

 

Being a post-graduate I frequently think about a topic to focus on next. On the Day of Archaeology I therefore met with one of my supervisors in our institute’s lounge to chat about possible projects.

Last but not least, let me clarify my point: I do dig pits at times.


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Rescue Excavation at Rochlitz Castle

By on July 4, 2012 in Archaeological Prospection, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Excavation, Historical Archaeology, Medieval, Post Medieval, Survey

June 29, 2012 – Welcome to my day.

My Name is Marcel Dallinger. I got my Magister degree in classical archaeology at Leipzig University in November 2011.

Currently I am working on an excavation in the castle of Rochlitz executed by the State Office for Archaeology Saxony.

Rochlitz itself is a medium-sized town in Saxony/ Germany.

My day starts at 6 a.m. in Sörnzig. After getting up and doing all the things that have to be done in the morning my way leads me to Rochlitz Castle which is approximately 3km away. Fortunately I own a little motorbike so the ride is rather a little trip through fields than a typical commute.

Work starts at 7am. The excavation team meets in our lunchroom. It is luckily the same room where all our equipment is stored therefore we have short distances to everything we need.

The excavation we are working on is a ‘rescue excavation’. The castle yard is about to be renewed completely. This includes new pipes for waste water, fresh water, rain water, earth-wires and all power supply lines. Finally the whole castle yard will get a new cobbled paving.

Thus our task is to excavate all parts of the castle yard which had not been excavated before- and this is approximately 70%. Most of them dates from the late Middle Ages.

The salvage of findings, their documentation and to save them from the dredger is exactly what we are doing there. But I have to say that all the other workers and especially the operator of the dredgers are very friendly and take care of us and the work we are doing. The normal dig goes on with well-known trowels. For measuring we use a tachymeter connected to AutoCad. Because of our lack of time we also do photogrammetrie. Sometimes it is better to draw archaeological records but this needs time that we don’t have. We have our morning break around 9am. After recharging our batteries we keep on revealing the secrets of history from the ground. Of course not every day we make great findings but thanks to the still opened castle museum there is a lot of public business. One day we were surprised by a visit of a television crew. But they were doing a documentary about the new exhibition in the museum so we could watch them filming and interviewing while continuing our work.

The last period of our day is from lunch break at 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. . At the end of our day we give ourselves a pat on the back for another great and interesting day working in the job with the most public Interest: archaeology.


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University of Bradford

A Day of Archaeological Work at the University of Bradford, UK.

By on July 2, 2012 in Archaeological Prospection, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Education, Iron Age, Osteology, Science

The University of Bradford’s Department of Life Sciences is a busy place. The Phoenix South West Building, a former 19th century mill, is home to disciplines of archaeological science, biological anthropology, environmental sciences and forensic science. On any given day it is a hive of activity full of undergraduates, taught and research postgraduates and staff. On Friday the 29th of July the department was a hive activity with staff and postgraduates’ alike, working hard at their research and general day to day duties. Below are just a few of the activities, taking place in the department, on that day.


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A Day of Archaeological Survey in Alberta’s Parkland

By on June 30, 2012 in Archaeological Prospection, Commercial Archaeology, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Prehistory, Survey

Hello!

Excited with my find… no, really.

Last year’s Day Of Archaeology saw me on a rather disappointing, but entirely typical urban project in York.  This year sees me on the other side of the Atlantic embarking on an entirely new venture.  In fact, the Day of Archaeology coincides (almost) with my first ever day working in commercial archaeology in Alberta in western Canada, and I’m both excited and nervous.  My Friday was taken up with a rather uneventful first aid course so I have taken the liberty of documenting Monday, which was my first day, and was much more interesting.

My day begins at 8am when I’m picked up from a friend’s place in Edmonton by Marg, who runs Circle Consulting.  We travel out to Stony Plain, where we meet Stephanie, an environmental consultant, who is accompanying us on our archaeological survey.  A further half hour drive takes us to the first of the mile long segments along the route of a water pipe that is to be surveyed.

Tailgate talk (done on the bonnet, but nevermind)

The first job is to do various health & safety paperwork; a standard risk-assessment, but here called a tailgate talk… or something.  Then we tool up.  I have been in archaeology a while, but I lack a lot of the PPE that is necessary here,  (thanks Marg for the loan).  It includes the boots, gloves, eye-protection, and sturdy long-sleeved clothes that I’m used to, as well as a sturdy red vest/equipment harness,  2litres of water, insect repellent (not enough as it turns out), hat (protection from the sun and ticks), gaiters (swampy ground and ticks again), bear horn & bear spray (funnily enough for bears), that I’m definitely not used to, as well as a lightweight spade.

 

An easy start to the job.

We set off on the first of the survey transects.  This part of Canada was originally surveyed in mile by mile “sections”, each divided into 4 “quarter sections” measuring half a mile square, and encompassing 160 acres.  Most of our survey transects were a mile long, and therefore a two mile round trip back to the truck.  This sounds easy, but as I was to discover, the terrain was extremely variable, and often very difficult.

 

 

 

Shovel testing

In places along the route that have a higher potential for human occupation, such as near watercourses, on south-facing slopes etc. we dig occasional shovel test-pits, each circa 30cm by 30cm, and only as deep as the sterile natural geology, and examine the upcast for artefacts.  The positions are marked with a hand-held GPS, notes are taken about the deposit depths and make-up, and if no artefacts have turned up we move on. On the second transect I find a bifacial tool fragment, which was the only stone of any sort in all of the shovel test pits I dug.  I find it hard to guage how common or uncommon this sort of find is during survey work, but I get the impression that it is towards the uncommon end of the scale.

 

This is the shovel test pit, so it really seems like needle-in-haystack stuff.  If an artefact is found in a test-pit, the next step is to dig a pattern of further test pits around the find-spot to determine if it is part of a larger scatter of artefacts and if so, how far it extends.  Video here.

Sadly, we don’t find anything in these test-pits, which I assume means that the bifacial tool was discarded or lost, and is not part of a occupation site.  Video here.

After our second mile long transect, 4 miles hiked so far, we have a welcome lunch in the truck. Video here. And we plan our next phase of work. Video here.

The third transect turns out to be where a road was started, the ditches were dug and the ground built up, but no surface was laid.  This therefore, is disturbed ground where there is little to no chance of finding an occupation site. This bit was not going to be productive, however the wildlife more than made up for it. Video here.

This transect was a long one, so we moved a vehicle to the far end so that we needn’t hike it twice.  Here is a video of the different type of terrain.  On this one we quite often lost the marked route of the pipeline. Video here.

At the end of the day we try to find a historic house that the pipeline passes.  We weren’t successful on this occasion, but here is a pic from the next day when we did find it.  It was built in the 1920′s by a skilled stonemason who used local stone (glacial erratic boulders I think), and is entirely unlike the other historic buildings out here.  I like it, but it looks a bit modern to my UK biased eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve had a great day, but I have no idea if it is typical of the work I’m going to be doing over the next 4 or 5 months.  Six miles, 33 shovel test-pits, some strange finds, left, and (video here), lots of insect bites, but no tick or bear encounters thankfully, and I’m knackered but pleased.

 

 

That’s my day, thanks for joining me on it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Novel electrical resistivity tomography @ The University of Bradford

By on June 29, 2012 in Archaeological Prospection, DayOfArch2012, Digital Archaeology, Survey

Today, like almost every day between May and September this year I’ve been working on my MSc research Project. Instead of just explaining what I’ve been doing today i thought it would be more interesting to describe what is going into my individual research project.

I’m experimented with a new novel way of collecting electrical resistivity tomography data  with a zzGeo FlashRes64 which as you might expect involves a significant amount of lab and field data collection.

To allow inversion of these novel techniques far too much of my time has been devoted to developing software to allow analysis of the data, and investigation of different visualisation techniques. Though  it does make a nice change from the driving rain outside.

FlashRes to Geotomo program

Before going out in the snow and rain its important to know that the data collected will be as good as possible. This means i spend a lot of time visualising different data collection techniques as point clouds as below. I promise they end up being quite relaxing.

Eventually after determining the best collection strategy, standing out in the rain and the cold for hours, extracting, converting and comparing data you do end up with a decent representation of whats beneath the surface.

 

P.S You should be able to zoom and play with the images above. If you can’t i’d suggest a modern HTML5 compatible browser

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Plots, Papers and Reports, Oh My!

By on June 29, 2012 in Archaeological Prospection, Bronze Age, DayOfArch2012, Digital Archaeology, Education, Iron Age, Prehistory, Survey

Wieke surveying at Monte san Nicole

 

I woke up this morning very excited about the Day of Archaeology, and looked over the first few posts while I ate my breakfast at home. It was a good moment to reflect on the last eleven months, since Day of Archaeology 2011. I’ve moved out of the shipping container (!) and now have a lovely flat near the park. I also now work full time, have been appointed a second post-doc position for the ‘other’ 20% of my time within my department (looking at Roman Minor Centres in the Pontine region). Technically, they have my fridays, but in practice we’re more flexible than that as they’ll need me for whole weeks at a time later in the year, so I’ll be working on Rural Life stuff today…

 

09:00 – and I’ve just arrived at work by bike- almost all of my colleagues bike or walk to work, even if they come from further afield, they’ll use the train. I check my email then get to grips with my to-do list (after tweeting it!). I’m happy because I’ve been able to cross a couple of things off it this week. I had to drop everything to get our CAA 2012 paper written up, after delivering it in Southampton in March (I’ve been on two lots of fieldwork and short holiday since- and haven’t had time to update my blog), and we’ve been working on the final push to get two pilot geophysical studies published. The latter isn’t quite finished, but it’s at the point of having been sent off to be read by someone other than me and Martijn- my project leader. We’re both at the point with it where we can’t really judge it objectively any more. I’m glad it’s almost done- it’s very difficult to write up research you didn’t conduct yourself, and I really hope that I’ve done justice to the work of the people involved before me!

To Do List

09.30 - … my elation turns into a sinking feeling as I ponder my to-do list. It looks OK in the picture, but the thing is, each of the things on the list has it’s own, usually longer list on another bit of paper somewhere. I’d been in the middle of writing a report tying up all of the loose ends from our 2011 fieldwork, when CAA and fieldwork intervened. It is a tricky job because we had to work out a lot of the data-handling as we went, so I don’t have a standard set of methods that I can update with the incidental details- everything needs to be carefully explained, every decision made in the field, every bit of statistics or image correction applied afterwards.

10:00 - Ten AM on Friday is coffee and cake time for the whole institute, but I decide that today I have too much going on to take part in the chatter and socialising, and start looking at some raw data files for the report…

10:15 - and my computer spectacularly crashes, fortunately the only thing it wipes out is the start of this post, which word can’t recover when I get everything rebooted… and my email is misbehaving so I decide coffee is a good idea after all.

 

10:30 - and I’m back at my desk. I’m working on a file from a site where gradiometer surveys last July showed the presence of several (probably Bronze Age) structures on a small plateau. This data is a series of surface MS (magnetic susceptibility) readings taken on the topsoil by the team in October, when I wasn’t there. They made a small but critical error in how they decided to place the readings on the grid set up for the geophysical surveys. It’s not a major problem, but it means I have to do about an hour’s careful editing work on the data before I can get it loaded into a program that lets me plot the results in a plan view, to let me look at spatial variations and compare them to other data. Luckily, the field team kept excellent notes about exactly how they gathered the data, so while it takes time, I can be sure that I have the right readings in the right place by lunchtime. I write it all up carefully in the report, and make a note to myself to update and improve the training notes and protocols I hand out to our student helpers.

 

My morning’s work- the offset between the plot and the lines of the grid is intentional due to the mistake made collecting the data.

 

Writing it all up…

12:30 – and I go to lunch in one of the amazing old buildings at the heart of the university with my team. Today,the canteen has mosterd soup (a local speciality) that everyone loves. We chat about the football, and the weather in a mixture of English and Dutch, and then head back over to the Institute for the rest of the day.

13:30 – I’ve loaded the data into the plotting program and I’m making corrections to it (such as removing very high or low values, to better visualise subtle changes) when I hear a lot of commotion outside. It’s the bus being loaded with all the equipment needed by the teaching excavations at Crustumerium next month. It makes me grin, knowing people will soon be off to Italy, but for now I need to concentrate so it’s in with the earphones and on with the music.

14:30 – I have to admit I’ve been sneaking onto the Day of Archaeology site and following the #dayofarchtag on twitter. The LAARC guys give me a five minute break by tracking down the contents of shelf 666 for me. Turns out, it holds a neat little bone gaming die from Roman London. I love small finds, I don’t get to work with them very often- though on this current project I’m learning a lot about protohistoric pottery. I’m fascinated by the little everyday things that make it into the archaeological record, probably more so than the big and shiny things that make the headlines.

16:00 – I’ve finished with the first survey for the report. It takes a while to get everything into the GIS to compare it to the other surveys of the area we made in July, and information about pottery lying on the surface in October. I record everything I have done to the data, as well as the exact conditions it was collected under, then describe the pattern of values. Finally I write a short paragraph offering an archaeological interpretation of the data, taking into account everything we currently know about the site and the landscape. It’s really important to record things in this level of detail for any future researcher that needs to understand how the final plots were made, and why I concluded specific things about the site. It’s painstaking, and probably no-one will ever need to use it, but I’ve had the horrendous experience of trying to work with badly described geophysical data before, so I’m determined not to leave some potential future researcher in the same mess! I start with the next site. On this one, we did some surveys because workmen found a protohistoric storage vessel in a trench for an irrigation pipe, but the surveys didn’t show up anything structural. I still have to write them up in the same detail though!

The gradiometer survey of the same area

The gradiometer survey of the same area

17:00 – Corien, another PhD student knocks on mine and Wieke’s door. Wieke is the PhD student I work with- the geophysics I do is part of a wider project encompassing her PhD research. We normally work until 18:00 but Corien reminds us that it is Friday, and drags us off for a post-work drink. Our project leader Martijn comes along too, and we’re joined by another PhD student from another part of the faculty. We chat about the path PhD students are expected to follow- all three of them are at different stages, and it’s quite different to the UK in some ways, so interesting to me. At six we part company and head off on our bikes…

I’m about to submit this to the team at HQ, and while I wait for it go live I’m off to read as many of the other posts as I can fit in! Happy Day of Archaeology everyone.

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Exploring Petra’s Diversity

By on June 29, 2012 in Archaeological Prospection, DayOfArch2012, Education, Excavation, Survey

This year’s Day of Archaeology falls during the first half of the field season of the Brown University Petra Archaeological Project (BUPAP). Managed by the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, BUPAP is a multi-disciplinary research project that hopes to understand the development of Petra and its surrounding landscapes diachronically, both through regional survey and excavation at individual sites.

The Petra Area and Wadi Silaysil Survey in action (Photo by Linda Gosner).

Portrayals of Petra have historically focused on the monumental city- images of the Siq, the royal tombs, the Treasury, and the Great Temple imbedded into popular culture through the likes of Indiana Jones and countless other representations. BUPAP looks to build upon this past research and public interest, to contextualize our understanding of Petra’s diversity, and to ask new questions of the city and its surroundings including periods and places that have generally received little academic attention. Our fieldwork is split into four interrelated projects: the Petra Upper Market Area (PUMA) involves excavation, geophysical survey, and architectural studies in the city center; the Petra Area and Wadi Silaysil Survey (PAWS) is an intensive and systematic regional survey focused on the area north of the city; the Bayda Islamic Village (BIV) features excavation and mapping of an Islamic settlement; and the Petra Routes Project (PRP) investigates local and regional communication and travel. These are four diverse and exciting projects which we hope will bring some new ideas to the study of the city.

Our excavation team hard at work.

The diversity of both the site and the project is also represented in our project team. We’re lucky to work with an international group of established scholars, graduate students, and professional architects from the US, Jordan, Malta, Canada, Italy, Germany, Colombia, and Macedonia. We also rely on strong ties to the local community to understand the site in both its ancient and modern context. Besides the obvious academic benefits of such a broad range of contributors, our international team also makes for a lively and enjoyable workday and dig house.

Since Friday is our day off, we don’t have much to report from site today- you can check out posts by our team members Andy Dufton or Allison Mickel to learn more about what our team gets up to during the break. You can also check in at our Facebook page if you’re interested in learning more about the project, or keeping up with our latest finds and updates.

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A Day of Archaeologists

By on June 29, 2012 in Archaeological Prospection, DayOfArch2012, Expeditions, Survey

Much of archaeology, especially in academia, comes down to how you spend your summer vacation. After finishing up the first year of a PhD at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University, this summer I’ve been making the project circuit in Italy and Jordan, the latter as part of the Brown University Petra Archaeological Project.

Today was the day off for the team, and met with a slow start after a late night of football and dancing under the stars on the roof of the dig house (aka Club Sayhoun). Day off or no day off, five of us were up early and ready for a six hour hike to Jebel Harun, the grave of Aaron (Arabic: Harun), brother of Moses. And what a hike it was- you can all check out Allison’s post detailing just why visiting the tomb has been a pilgrimage for almost two thousand years. To add to her sparkling narrative would hardly do it justice, so instead I’m going to focus on the archaeologists with whom I spent the day hiking to the top of the known Petra world.

The hiking team (from left to right): Sarah Craft, Andrew Moore, Linda Gosner, and Allison Mickel

Crafty just finished up the fourth year of her PhD at the Joukowsky Institute. She researches pilgrimage sites in central Turkey, so was mixing business and ‘pleasure’ in hiking up what seemed like 10000m in 30+ degree desert sun. She’s also been a great friend in my first year at Brown in showing me both the school and the city, and will be sorely missed this coming year as she lives in Istanbul with a fellowship at the Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations.

I just met Andrew this year at Petra, where he’s working for the first time after finishing his MA at the University of Colorado Boulder. In the last week I’ve already discovered he has a wicked sense of humour and, after today, I also know the man is a beast when it comes to an intense hike. I’m sure there must be some goat blood in his family tree somewhere.

Linda is another Brown student, so I’ve had the chance to get to know her pretty well in the last year. Aside from a shared love of dance (NB- she can actually dance, and I cannot), and a mutual hope for a Spain win against Italy on Sunday, we’ve also spent the last year in classes and brushing up on Latin to varying degrees of success. If I wanted to embarrass us both, I’d post the video of us re-enacting the opening scenes of the Lion King on the mountain today. I think this time discretion is the better part of valor.

Allison is another person I’ve had the good fortune to meet this season at Petra, and has just finished up her first year of a PhD at Stanford. We’ve already had some great chats about communicating archaeology to the public. I don’t know how she made it up the mountain after a serious bout of sickness yesterday, but after some strategic shady stops, a lot of water, and even more stairs we emerged victorious to greet the others and have some lunch.

Exhausted. A pilgrimage really is all about the journey.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of the discussion of archaeology focusses on the archaeology itself- on the site, the materials, the landscape, the archive, the publication. But at least to me, the personal interactions on days like today leave a more lasting impression. Meeting and developing friendships with these people- the archaeologists, my peers- is the thing that is ultimately the most rewarding aspect of a career in archaeology. I’m looking forward to similar days of archaeological pilgrimage, both in the rest of my season with BUPAP and in the future.

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Human Remain Detection Dogs Help Archaeologists Find Unmarked Graves

By on June 29, 2012 in Archaeological Prospection, DayOfArch2012

As you probably know by now if you have been following us on twitter (@FPANNrthCentral), we have been out at Munree Cemetery in Tallahassee today. We have been working with specially trained dogs called Human Remain Detection Canines, or HRD dogs. They have been helping us to find unmarked burials that are at minimum 100 years old! The Munree Cemetery is a historic African American cemetery with over 250 known burials, most of which do not have any type of marker present. Some of the graves are visible at the surface, but some areas we were unsure about. Of course, we wanted to avoid excavating in a cemetery, so we brought in the dogs! Two of the dogs and their handlers came all the way from Louisiana to help us out today! We also had a local dog handler and her HRD dog volunteer  to help us out. The dogs were able to identify several areas that possibly contain human burials. Tomorrow morning we are going to bring out the ground penetrating radar (GPR) to see if we can find any anomalies in those areas. The cemetery is five acres, and it would take us days to GPR the whole thing, and even longer to process all that data, so the dogs have helped us narrow down the areas to those that have the greatest probability of containing burials.

Jada and Dixie, both specially trained HRD canines, traveled all the way from Louisiana with their handlers to help us today!


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