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An Archaeologist Through Digital Era

By on July 9, 2012 in DayOfArch2012, Digital Archaeology, Roman

I’ll write this post in Italian because I’m more familiar with my language: at the end of the post you’ll find an English abstract of my report.

La vita dell’archeologo digitale, nonostante il periodo che viviamo pieno di computer e “diavolerie” tecnologiche, è tutt’altro che facile: non è un problema soltanto italiano, seppure l’Italia è il Paese che meno a livello accademico sta facendo per mantenersi al passo e, mai come in questo caso, la colpa non è degli amministratori che ci governano. Personalmente mi ritengo uno dei fortunati che è riuscito a portare avanti la sua passione verso le nuove tecnologie fino al dottorato, che sto per concludere all’Università di Roma “La Sapienza”. I problemi sono molteplici e non è certo questa la sede per affrontarli, ma molta strada è ancora da percorrere, soprattutto finché ogni gruppo di ricerca si farà il suo digitale, invece che lavorare con gli altri gruppi per creare delle best practices comuni che possano armonizzare le grandi quantità di dati digitali che vengono generati. Da anni cerco di seguire il più possibile, attraverso convegni nazionali ed internazionali, i lavori dei principali gruppi che si occupano di Virtual Heritage, dalle esperienze di Frisher in Virginia, a quelle di Donaeu a Vienna, piuttosto che in Italia al CNR di Roma o presso FBK a Trento. Mi sono anche quest’anno fatto promotore di un incontro dedicato all’archeologia virtuale, dove sono state mostrate diverse indagini legate alla possibilità di comunicare l’archeologia attraverso i nuovi media digitali: il materiale ed i video dell’evento sono o saranno presto in rete.

Dal canto mio, le giornate scorrono piuttosto tranquillamente, tra scadenze da rispettare, vita da biblioteca, PC sempre troppo acceso. Negli ultimi tempi, per rimanere in tema al “Day of Archaeology”, per il mio progetto di dottorato sulle Terme di Traiano sto lavorando ad una riproduzione digitale dell’antica Roma in 3D relativa al tardo II secolo d.C., ovvero post adrianea ma pre-severiana, assolutamente in low-poly e naturalmente di tipo esclusivamente “visuale”, da paesaggio, che possa fare da sfondo coerente con la proposta ricostruttiva relativa alle terme, centro focale del mio percorso di ricerca. Naturalmente si tratta di una quantità di edifici impressionante che non è possibile modellare tutti da solo, sebbene come detto in modo molto veloce. Il primo passo è la necessaria raccolta di informazioni bibliografiche dalle quali recuperare misure, piante, prospetti, sezioni, le migliori delle quali possono anche essere utilizzate come blue-prints, li digitalizzo attraverso una fotocamera ma ultimamente anche attraverso il sensore dello smartphone, sufficientemente risoluto (5MP); questo naturalmente introduce una serie di deformazioni non controllabili, in genere cerco di stare il più attento possibile affinché il disegno sia in piano e la camera sia ortogonale ad esso. In Photoshop una passata al “lens correction” consente di correggere matematicamente le distorsioni più evidenti, il free trasform in seguito può aiutare a raddrizzare ulteriormente le linee più ostiche: bisogna sempre essere coscienti che questo tipo di procedimento non è scientifico, ma il mio obiettivo è appunto soltanto visuale. Un controllo all’istogramma ed il file è pronto per essere importato in AutoCAD, dove un’opportuna scalatura mi consente di verificare il grado di accuratezza dei vari elementi: in base a quanto detto prima, può capitare che un angolo del foglio sia coerente ma l’angolo opposto no, in tal caso bisognerà fare attenzione e proprio per questo motivo a volte faccio la scalatura su elementi del disegno con misure note piuttosto che sulla scala metrica. Prima della vettorizalizzazione, preparo i layer in modo opportuno, generalmente distinguendo tra pianta, colonne, etc. e nel caso dei prospetti tra scalea, podio, tetto. In CAD mi limito al 2D, solo in casi particolari mi accingo a fare delle estrusioni per il calcolo dei volumi, solitamente utilizzando la proprità “spessore” delle polilinee chiuse, una modalità di tridimensionalizzare il disegno che mantiene il desktop operativo del programma molto leggero per la scheda video. Sono pronto: apro 3DS Max, attraverso il link manager collego  il disegno di AutoCAD al file di Max (modalità che mi consente di riflettere automaticamente qualsiasi modifica che faccio in CAD dentro 3DS), imposto i layer per il 3D e inizio a lavorare. È importante ricordarsi sempre di non toccare mai i layer collegati. Con lo snap vertex e gli oggetti line e box procedo a ricalcare gli elementi fondamentali della pianta/alzato in CAD a cui poi darò la corretta estrusione: come dicevo, le digitalizzazioni migliori possono essere usate come blue-prints, sfondi di modellazione che aiutano a lavorare l’elemento 3D in modo più rapido e preciso, quando magari ci sono degli elementi architettonici che richiedono una modellazione cosiddetta “organica”. Il resto fa parte della normale operatività del 3D, che non sto qui a spiegare, magari presentando un WIP del lavoro relativo al Teatro di Marcello, la cui immagine apre l’articolo. Mediamente si riesce a lavorare un monumento in 2 giorni, a seconda naturalmente della complessità richiesta. La difficoltà sarà mettere insieme tutti i vari elementi cercando di rimanere entro i 10.000.000 di poligoni (Rome Reborn nella seconda versione ha superato quota 9 milioni): lo saprete al Day of Archaeology 2013, quando il mio progetto di dottorato sarà appena concluso.

English abstract

The digital era is very difficult today for an archaeologist: the most difficult consist in academia and university where the technologies and methodologies not are implemented yet. All over still remain at personal choiche of students, and a self-knowledge of it. Following the most important works of archaeologists and researcher around the world about Virtual Heritage, I promote this year the 3° seminar on Virtual Archaeology in Rome.

For my PhD project I working on an low-poly and visual (not scientific) Ancient Digital Rome in 3D at the end of II century AD. Tipically, my lasts “Day of Archaeology” are as this: in library I search for update bibliography about the monuments, digitalized plants and other images for blue-prints, importing in AutoCAD to vectorialize it (using layer named correctly) in 2D. In 3DS Max I link the CAD file for 3D: also in 3DS I use new layer for tridimensional data. Naturally, the sequence of 3D is the normal sequence in computer graphic. At the beginning of this post you find a picture of Theatre of Marcellus in WIP mode.

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A Town Unearthed: Folkestone Before 1500 – Community & Archaeology.

By on July 7, 2012 in Community Archaeology, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Education, Excavation, Finds, Iron Age, Prehistory, Roman, Romano-British

Hello and welcome to my post!  My name is Annie and I one of the lucky few who are undertaking a Community Archaeology Training Placement being offered by the Council for British Archaeology and I’m doing it with Canterbury Archaeological Trust.  Here’s a link to the CBA web-site where there is more information on the placements, the project is set to continue for a few more years so do keep an eye out if you are interested in signing up!

Anyway, down to business and I’ll start with a quick run down of the project.  A Town Unearthed: Folkestone before 1500 is a 3 year community project centred around uncovering Folkestone’s rich and varied history through a variety of activities including archaeological excavation, lectures, school visits, events, talks, forums, and exhibitions (to name but a few!) with volunteers taking a lead in organising, stewarding, and generally making things happen.  The project is in it’s final year and I have been tasked with being in charge of the archaeology side of things which is where our Day of Archaeology day comes in….

…Last year the archaeology side of the project centred around a Roman Villa which is tragically falling off the edge of a cliff (estimates are predicting the whole site will be gone in 50 years).  The Villa was uncovered and open to the public from the 1920s-1950s when post-war austerity forced it’s closure and it was re-buried until the 1980s when some archaeologists went in to see how much was being lost; since then more has gone over and it was decided to open it up to have another look.  Around 200 people from Folkestone had a go at excavating the site over 3 months, with plenty more dropping in to have a look, and the results were surprising. Only a portion of the Villa was re-excavated and produced some fantastic finds of the period, but more exciting perhaps was the discovery of a large Iron Age settlement beneath the floors of the Villa.  This settlement appeared to be industrial in nature, as a large number of quern stones, made from the local Green Stone found on the beach below, were discovered, and have been found in the gardens of the houses surrounding the area (many of them now making up attractive fireplaces and rockeries!); some were even incorporated into the fabric of the Roman Villa.  This year we are not returning to the Villa site but are instead test pitting in the gardens of the houses near to the site in the hope of picking up some Roman or Iron Age features to establish the extent of the site.  On our Day of Archeology day we were mid-excavation in our first ‘pit’ and I’m going to give you a insight into how I like to involve my volunteers on community projects.

So our day starts and we immediately pick up where we left off on the previous day with everyone getting stuck in with the trowels…

We find an interesting green patch of clay, which turned out to be a very unexciting modern dumping episode…

..we persevere…

…giving the trench a quick scan with the metal detector…

…and come up with a bullet! We also had two coins (possibly Roman) and a few buttons which may have been from military uniforms. Folkestone played a large part in both the First and Second World wars and to find evidence for this is very exciting for me…

..and finally starting the recording. I’m a big believer in volunteers getting involved in all aspects of archaeology, including the paperwork, so if you ever end up on one of my sites I will torture you with it..

…and there we have it, a day of community archaeology with a fantastic bunch of people who I’d like to thank for their hard work and dedication to the project. Although this particular test pit did not produce any Roman or Iron Age features we had a lot of pottery from the period so I’m satisfied. We’ll be test pitting all through the summer. I am blogging about my placement so if you’d like to have a look at what I’ve been up to, or want to keep up to date on this project then here’s the link.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

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Leicestershire’s 2 Month Old Archaeology Officer

By on July 5, 2012 in Community Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Iron Age, Museum Archaeology, Roman

It’s two months since I started as Archaeology Officer for Leicestershire County Council and I’m finally starting to find my feet.  It’s the job I’ve always dreamed of and I feel very lucky to be doing something I love but have to admit to feeling overwhelmed with how much I have to learn!

I was previously working exclusively with the a collection of Late Iron Age and Roman material known as the Hallaton Treasure and was based at Harborough Museum in the beautiful town of Market Harborough, Leicestershire.  This was an amazing job promoting and interpreting a mysterious collection of objects including over 5000 Iron Age and Roman coins and a Roman cavalry helmet.  However, as it was an externally funded project I knew it wouldn’t last forever and so when the opportunity came up to apply for a new post, I jumped at it.

I am now responsible for the county’s archaeology collections, so although I still get to play with the Treasure, there is a huge amount of material I need to get to know a whole lot better which is fun and daunting at the same time.  My role also includes community archaeology - promoting best practice, providing support and linking community groups with the collections which we hold.  Thankfully my previous role brought me into contact with many of these wonderful local groups and so there are many friendly faces who have been helping me out during these first two months.  I am also lucky to be working with our Finds Liaison Officer, Wendy Scott, who has been helping me settle into my new job.

Today I’ve been doing run of the mill stuff: checking emails, liaising with archaeological contractors, preparing for a launch event for the Leicestershire and Rutland Festival of Archaeology (the biggest regional contribution to the Council for British Archaeology’s nationwide event thanks to a fantastic network of heritage groups and enthusiastic indivuduals), working on press releases, trying to make time to do a bit of sorting in the store.

A small area of the archaeology section of our museum store.

Something cropped up which I haven’t dealt with before and sent me into a temporary panic.  An archaeological contractor (we are a repository for archaeological archives created as a result of the planning process) had found a human cremation and needed to know some details for the exhumation notice – what would happen to the remains after they had been studied.  The result was that we would make a decision on the merits of retaining the remains in our collection after the whole site had been studied and we could assess their importance.  The ethics of the treatment of human remains from archaeological excavations is an interesting area and one which I need to learn more about, fast!

My day also included a very geeky conservation with two colleagues regarding how to allocate accession numbers to the Hallaton Roman helmet which is actually at least four helmets from one deposit.  Many parts are still in the British Museum’s Department of Conservation and Scientific Research as they have been analysing and conserving the parts for us.  A very boring conversation but important nonetheless.

My day ended with lugging a huge display case into my car, ready for a display at Burrough Hill Iron Age hillfort on Sunday.  This is a University of Leicester dig at the highest point in Leicestershire, an amazing spot.  I’m providing a display of material we hold in our collection from digs dating back to the 1960s and 1970s, including a massive Iron Age storage jar.  Nice to be able to take it back to where it came from for the day!

Iron Age storage jar found at Burrough Hill hillfort from Leicestershire County Council’s archaeology collection.

 

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Research paper, desk, keyboard, Archaeologist mug

On the Trail of the Elusive Fallow Deer…

By on July 4, 2012 in DayOfArch2012, Education, Environmental Archaeology, Finds, Iron Age, Osteology, Roman, Science

Research paper, desk, keyboard, Archaeologist mug

I am a part-time postgraduate student, currently working towards an MSc in Archaeological Research at the University of Nottingham, which will take two years to complete. I’ve come back to archaeology after a long break, during which time I have pursued my career in research and academic computing. However, I am still in love with archaeology so my long-held ambition to do a further degree in the subject is at last being realised and I am really enjoying it, despite all the late nights reading and working on essays after I’ve finished my day job. As a mature student, I was concerned at first that I would find it difficult to fit in. However, the staff and my fellow students have been really encouraging, which is helping to make the whole experience very satisfying.

The taught part of our course has finished for this year, so it’s now time to get down to preparing for the research work which will form the basis of the 15,000 word dissertation we must submit and which accounts for a third of the credits on our course. I’m interested in the application of scientific techniques in archaeology, which has influenced my choices of modules, including archaeobotany and zooarchaeology, and my research will be using a fascinating technique, stable isotope analysis, to try to answer some interesting archaeological questions. Continue Reading →

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Digging Glass: A Day in the Glass Lab

By on July 4, 2012 in DayOfArch2012, Roman

June 29th found me, as it usually does, doing archaeology.  Some years I’m excavating, some years I am lecturing to groups who are visiting sites like the ones I’ve excavated, and some years, like this one, I am working away on the publication of finds from all those years of excavating.

Glass is a beautiful, seductive material and a rich source of evidence about technical and aesthetic aspects of a culture and about the complex processes of exchange and influence between cultures.  Glass — luxurious, expensive, and resource intensive — reflects the decision-making of the elites and their sense of style. The production of glass is a fundamental technology based on complex technical knowledge and specialized skill. Glass, discovered by accident, grew to transform the environment of daily life by brightening tables and structures. The story of the coming of age of glass is one of the fascinating stories in the history of technology. One you should check into.

I am currently working on the glass from three sites:  Aila and Humaya in Jordan, and Gordion in Turkey.  The glass recovered from these three sites covers the gamut of glass forming technologies (molded, core-formed, mosaic, blown) and ancient periods of production (Iron Age through early Islamic).  So working on archaeological glass asks for a dedication to the material itself in all its life phases and permutations.  Ever since I worked at the Jamestown Glasshouse during my undergraduate years, it’s been glass for me just as it’s coins or bones or pottery for someone else.

Today, on the Day of Archaeology, it’s Roman glass from Gordion, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Phrygia.  I am beginning to write up the chapter on Roman glass for a final report.

Gordion had an interesting Roman period, one until recently mostly overlooked, and has produced interesting Roman glass that reveals periods of economic prosperity, a taste for luxury glass tablewares, and information about Gordion’s connections to the outer world in the period.

For today, a closer look at a heavily weathered fragmentary mosaic bowl.

mosaic bowl fragments

Heavily weathered fragments of mosaic bowl in new container.

As with the study of other artifact, the study of this glass has several stages.  Because we are not permitted to remove the glass from Turkey, I have carefully examined, measured, described, and drawn each artifact in the depots at the excavation house near Gordion.  Here in my lab at Bucknell University this summer I am working from my drawings, notes, and from photographs I have taken in Turkey (some of which are below).

This fragmentary bowl was excavated in 1951 and had received relatively little (no?) attention over the years.  Several years ago we moved the fragments from a candy box with tissue paper padding into a beautifully designed container created by Ariel O’Connor, a Gordion conservation intern.  It has been a puzzling vessel for me because of the heavy weathering, but seemed clearly to be a mosaic bowl of some sort. I have worked with conservators on site to remove some of the weathering layers to see what lay below.  What you see in the following photos is what we found.

Cleaned fragment.

Cleaned fragment with color scheme of mosaic strips visible (back lit).

Great excitement as we uncover gold!

Cleaned fragment with gold band visible in sunlight.

Fragment with gold band (back lit).

Quite a difference from those gray, filmy pieces in the first picture!

Here’s a photo of  part of the rim of the bowl:

Cleaned fragment of rim (back lit).

 

Today, in my library full of studies of excavated glass and museum collections, I have been trying to figure out the technique, color scheme, and date of the vessel.  I am also trying to locate comparable excavated pieces or pieces in collections that will give me hints to the origin and date.

A final entry on this piece in my field notebook says the fragments appear to show that the vessel was fashioned from tooled strips of canes with a repeating sequence of turquoise blue, yellow edged in purple, opaque white edged in dark blue, and colorless encasing shattered gold leaf.

A wonderful aspect of my job is spending a pleasant hour or so leafing through likely museum catalogues and that thrill of discovery when I find, just now, what I was looking for – a parallel in profile, technique, and color scheme, in a favorite publication – David Grose’s catalogue of early ancient glass in the Toledo Museum of Art (1989).

And the answer is:  The vessel is very likely a gold-band mosaic bowl of the early to mid-first century BCE.  The profile is that of a broad shallow bowl with an upright rim with a narrow rounded edge. It was likely assembled in sections from tooled, fused strips, molded, then rotary polished.  It is one of two bowls (some of the fragments are definitely from a second bowl).

New problem(!):  The bowl appears to come from a securely dated context – a destruction level – that’s a century earlier than that.  Hmm.  Well, this is how we make progress.   Stay tuned for the final publication!

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Alken Wetlands: Peat and Bones

By on July 3, 2012 in DayOfArch2012, Digital Archaeology, Excavation, Historical Archaeology, Prehistory, Roman

So I took a break and went out to my parents for lunch so that they could look after Bess while I did a bit more work.

The next thing I wanted to look at today, after having done some work on my presentation for the Digital Humanities conference in Hamburg, is the Alken Wetlands project I am going to be working on from Monday morning.

Over the last 50 years discoveries have been made in the Alken Wetlands (Alken Enge in Danish) of a large amount of skeletal material – thought to be sacrificed warriors from around year 1 CE. The project (a collaboration between The Department of Prehistoric Archaeology at Aarhus University and Skanderborg Museum) has received a grant from the Carlsberg Foundation to begin a research project this summer. We are going to start out with two months of excavation.

Once we get started I hope to be able to blog a little more about what we are doing on site – but for now I am looking forward to Monday and the start-up!

You can read more about the project and Alken Wetlands on Skanderborg Museums website.

Edit 3rd July 2012:

The start-up of the excavation went well and the first press-release is out via Aarhus University.

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ArcGIS

Academic Research: A Day of Meetings…

By on July 2, 2012 in Anglo-Saxon, Bronze Age, Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Digital Archaeology, Early Medieval, Education, Iron Age, Roman, Romano-British

I work as a researcher at the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford.  My job is to look after the GIS elements of a large (ERC funded), 5 year project to study the English landscape from 1500BC to AD 1086, which we call the EngLaId project.  For any who don’t know, GIS stands for Geographic(al) Information Systems (or sometimes Science) and it is, essentially, computer software that lets you create maps and analyse data in its spatial context (to cut a long story short!).  Our project is using GIS as one of the tools in its armoury in order to try to understand continuity and change in the English rural landscape over the period of 2,500 years from the Middle Bronze Age to Domesday.  My job mostly involves bringing together a large number of pre-existing datasets within GIS software (specifically, ArcGIS) and trying to find patterns and trends over time.

ArcGIS

ArcGIS. Spatial data: contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2012 (OS OpenData)

However, Friday was not a day that involved a lot of GIS work for me.  Two of my colleagues on the EngLaId team work at the University’s eResearch Centre (OeRC).  During the morning, a few of us went over to the OeRC to meet with them and a Professor of Visualisation (Min Chen) and his team.  We had a long and interesting discussion about innovative ways of visualising data.  Prof Chen made a distinction between the two purposes of visualisation: to enable better academic understanding and exploration of data and to enhance public presentation of data.  The former is where his team’s research interests lie and they have done some fascinating work on creating ‘glyphs’ to display multiple data attributes at once.  The previous time we met with him, Prof Chen had shown us a series of glyphs that described the behaviour of sperm, which was most memorable for the erratic travel paths of the sperm found in ‘rats on drugs’!  The meeting ended with me being invited to take part in a workshop on geospatial visualisation at the end of August.

I returned to my office for a couple of hours, ate some lunch, and set my computer to running some GIS tools.  I then returned to the OeRC after lunch, leaving my processing processing, for our biweekly EngLaId team meeting.  We normally meet here at the School of Archaeology, but the building is being partly rewired over the summer, so there is currently no space to hold meetings here.  The team meeting lasted until after four o’clock, and seemed to be productive.

When we got back to the office, my colleague was told there was in a rat in her office (presumably disturbed by the builders), but I don’t think this rat was on drugs…  As it had been a long day, the pub beckoned, so we swiftly adjourned to there.  I had to return to the office later to check on my GIS processing (and pick up my bike), which had completed by that time.

Friday wasn’t really a typical day for me, as I am more usually found working at the computer in our attic office.  But it was a fairly productive day over all, despite the relative lack of normal work.  If anybody wants to know more about EngLaId, then please feel free to check out our own blog.

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Investigating Urbanism at Ancient Gabii

By on June 30, 2012 in DayOfArch2012, Digital Archaeology, Education, Roman

One would scarcely guess that a mighty ancient city once occupied the site of Gabii as it is today simply a quiet spot in the eastern suburbs of Rome, Italy. Yet a quick look at the physical landscape and its now dormant volcanic features makes it plain why a first millennium BCE city grew – and prospered – here. The Gabines found themselves at a key crossroads, positioning them well to capitalize on trade in central Italy and to eventually enjoy unprecedented political and ritual friendship with Rome herself, as described by the ancient authors.

It was perhaps the fact that the site of Gabii is now abandoned – a rarity for the ancient Latin cities, shared perhaps only with Tusculum – that attracted a team from the University of Michigan to begin work on the site in 2007. A key question for the Gabii Project team then (and now) revolved around a great curiosity of the beginnings of urbanism and its processes in Italy, along with a full exploration of the material culture correlates for the emergence of social hierarchy in Latium. A two-phase geophysical survey revealed a latent street grid that proved a worthy impetus for excavations to begin in 2009.

Fast forward three years to June 2012 … the project has now completed two survey seasons, three excavation seasons, and is embarking on its fourth excavation season. Our multi-national team brings students at all levels from all over the world to work in the heart of this extinct Latin city where they learn first-hand the cutting edge techniques of field archaeology. The site is offering up a complex narrative of settlement and abandonment that begins with evidence for Orientalizing period elite burial of infants and continues to Imperial Roman inhumation burials and industrial works, especially those aimed at exploiting the local tufo bedrock. In the middle of the story, so to speak, is a fascinating glimpse of what Italy was like at the mid-point of the first millennium BCE, when archaic elites lost traction and gave way to a differently organized society. The physical evidence of this at Gabii comes in the form of abandoned archaic compounds giving way to a quasi-orthogonal town plan that changes the alignment and apportionment of the city itself.

Our team has been in the field for over two weeks thus far in 2012 and while on June 29 we were idled by a public holiday in Rome, the day was a good one for reflection on the project, its participants, and its aims. The dual goals of excavating early Italian urbanism and helping to train a new generation of field archaeologists work surprisingly well in the pluristratified urban contexts of this Latin site. The team looks forward to unlocking more of Gabii’s secrets in the coming weeks and years.

 

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Archaeology is Adventure – Even When You End up in the Office

By on June 29, 2012 in DayOfArch2012, Finds, Museum Archaeology, Roman

People like to think about the life of archaeologists as a very adventurous endeavour. They are right, except that in my experience is has mainly to do with extreme logistics, rather than dark dungeons and holy relics.

Two weeks ago, I had started thinking about what to write in my Day of Archaeology post. I was already in Gortyna, Crete, to study ceramic finds for my PhD. I spent my days in a sunny and dusty storage building, classifying and drawing late Roman and early Byzantine potsherds. Something very normal. No adventure involved, but still I was in Crete, one of the most amazing places I have ever been. Every day looked the same, with the exception of Sunday (afternoon). Occasional excitement for a few cooking pots, a painted jug. “Fun” counting and weighing sherds one by one, trying to develop new ways to assess depositional history. Not so different from what they told us last year from Knossos, just one hour of driving from Gortyna.

4th to 5th century cooking pots – The Day of Archaeology I had imagined before THE call

Then, on Tuesday 19th June 2012, ten days ago, I got a phone call. THE phone call. The phone call that turns my life upside down. And my 29th June 2012, Day of Archaeology, became totally different from what I had imagined.

I was being hired as museum assistant at the Ministry of Culture in Italy. A permanent position. Il posto fisso, as we say in Italy. If you think of Italian bureaucracy as a slow and inefficient monster, you have to adjust your views, drastically. I was asked to be in Rome in a few days to sign the contract. I had to leave Crete in less than 24 hours. Pack half of my stuff, and leave the other half there, together with my car and tons of potsherds waiting to be studied. Poor Alessandro, who was with me in Gortyna, moved to Athens instead of spending two weeks alone in the Mesara. I am lucky, and I have some good friends in Rome. I spent 5 days in Rome waiting to sign the contract. I went to two international conferences, visited the Soprintendenza office where ArcheoFOSS took place only two weeks ago, attended the Baptism of a friends’ baby and met many friends. That’s the adventurous everyday life of an archaeologist in Rome.

On Monday 25th June, I signed the contract it the magnificent Ministry headquarters palace. And I took a train from Rome to Genoa on the same day. On Tuesday, I did my first working day, at the office of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Liguria, waiting to move to my destination: the archaeological site of Albintimilium, close to France. The place where Nino Lamboglia started his pioneering study of (Late) Roman pottery more than 60 years ago.

Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Liguria, Palazzo Reale, Genova

And so comes my Day of Archaeology. At the office, making phone calls to organise my stay in the Riviera di Ponente, speaking with new colleagues, taking instructions on the tasks I will be doing next week, joining the trade union and above all trying to get an idea of what is happening to my life on the day of my 29th birthday.

In my 10 years doing archaeology, I’ve seen that you never know what is going to happen and you have to be always prepared to change strategy to follow your path. It is true, archaeology is adventure, and you cannot turn it off.

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Making Archaeologists. Caerleon Excavations.

By on June 29, 2012 in Day of Archaeology, DayOfArch2012, Excavation, Iron Age, Medieval, Post Medieval, Roman

As ‘Day of Archaeology 2012′ sprung into life, the excavations on the Iron Age Caerleon 2012 dig came to a close. This is our final day of a brisk five day project. At the moment it’s about 8:15 in the morning, and I am looking out towards the University of Wales, Newport campus. There are clouds, lots of them, and they are not the fluffy light ones, they have a pretty foreboding look about them… The campus is roughly a twenty minute drive from our excavation site, and our team this year has been dependent on our committed core of undergraduates. I should clarify that these are history undergraduate students, rather than archaeology undergraduates. Time was, our university had a bustling and well respected archaeology department, but for a variety of reasons, we sadly lost that department, and history was left standing alone. However, there are enough of us archaeologists who survive in and near to the university, and the desire for archaeological research stands strong, even if we don’t have the name ‘archaeology’ on our department notice board anymore. A strong tenant of our excavations in the past was to train prospective field archaeologists, and that has been seen again this year, with the majority of the team being made up of first time archaeologists.

You would not know to look at them, but all five of the team members here are on their very first field excavation.

 

The excavations this year are just below an Iron Age hillfort (Lodge Hill), which overlooks the Roman fortress at Caerleon. We’ve been following up on a number of features, and today we are focusing on the second of our two sites, the excavation of a trackway feature. We have some great maps that suggest the length of the trackway to be pretty significant, and running in a temptingly straight line (tempting if you like Roman features that is), going straight over the top of the hillfort. Lots of questions were being asked of this feature, how was it made, how old was it, what was it used for? As the final day of our excavations proceed, hopefully we’ll be able to deal with some of those queries.

The trackway.

(…several hours later…)

Well, back home now, 6pm(ish), in the warmth of the office, feet up and in front of the computer. Those black clouds spied earlier gave as expected, and turned the majority of our ‘day of archaeology’, into a day of mini trench floods and occasional soakings. Such is the way with field archaeology. That though is not to say that our last day of excavation was in any way a negative, in fact we had quite a successful day.

First things first though, for many of the entries posted for Day of Archaeology, we have been treated to some stunning artefacts and insights. Alas, the most time consuming activity that took place on our final day, was, as is often the case for field excavation, back filling! It’s one of those questions that is often asked of us by passing visitors, ‘what are you going to do with it (the archaeology) once you’ve finished?’, the standard short answer is ‘fill it in’. So for our day in the life of an archaeologist, it was a day of hole filling, more so than it was for hole excavation (although it’s not always a dull affair as these keen excavators hopefully show)!

As some of the trenches were being filled in though, we had sunk two test pit sections through our trackway feature, which previously in the week had revealed two distinct surfaces, and in the last hour or so of the day, revealed a third. Coming down on a really compact clay surface (you can see the moment when it was revealed here), the most obvious inclusion was a wealth of charcoal material.

The discovery of this surface was one of the last acts of archaeology on site for the year. However, the questions go on. Dating from the charcoal will be next on the agenda. We only returned a few sherds of probably post medieval pottery (though it might be late, you never know) from the first two surfaces, but the charcoal may well let us take our site back much further, we’ll have to wait and see. When we do get the results though, that should go a long way to helping us tackle some of those many questions we had going into this, so it’s a great result, even if the result means that we must wait on some more results.

And so as the day of archaeology ends, so does our excavation. It’s been a blast being involved in field archaeology again after some time away, but as interesting as the excavation element has been, today, as with the rest of this week has reminded me of one thing in particular. Field excavation has a funny effect on people. There is something about going through the hours of excavation, be it in sunshine or rain, be it through the excitement of discovering a road surface untouched for however many centuries, or the frustration of sifting through yet another find free ditch (two of our team know what that is all about now), that brings people together. At the start of this week, we had probably four distinct groups of people, different backgrounds, different social groups, different interests, yet spending the week sharing the experience of field excavation, those barriers gradually whittled away. Those involved became friends, became united, and that is both a surprising but also familiarly reassuring thing about field excavation. At the end of it all, we had had a wonderful time, become good friends, and ultimately, we were united as archaeologists. Here’s hoping your day of archaeology was as good as ours!

 

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