Saturday 10 November 2012

MSc Dissy: the love and hate story of a student and her paper.

In a vain attempt to prevent all undergraduate and postgraduate efforts wordlwide from falling into a void and being forever forgotten by normal people and the academic community alike, I decided to post my MSc dissertation here, so that I, if nobody else, may remember it everytime I have a look at my blog and reflect upon hundreds of hours of hard work, procrastination and complaining. Bits of sentences have mysteriously vanished from my paper thanks to the magic of Microsoft Word (I think it happenend when I added the images, a job only trained professionals should attempt). I'm sure it's full of mistakes, but there's no point changing it so I'll keep telling myself it was just the work of a young and naive student of Archaeology.
I invite all graduates to post links to their own dissertations so that they may finally get out of the dark underground corridors in which all student papers are confined for eternity! Whaddya mean, nobody cares?

Oh and in case anybody wonders, it's about Iron Age roundhouses in Britain and in France. And also cultural diffusion, identities, and other stuff. I had a great time writing it (if you forget all the issues linked to the fact that I'm naturally super-lazy), and my tutor was amazing. Yay Edinburgh Uni!


The following pictures show why Daisy is to blame for any inaccuracies in my dissertation. She's been rolling over on my work material and tampering with my Word files.




Neanderthal and stuff...

Coming out of Niaux cave, lamps in hand.

Cave art projection, Musée National de Préhistoire.

Reconstitution of Neandertal life, Musée
National de Préhistoire


Perfectly accurate re-enactment (2): prehistoric
 rites at the Cro-Magnon rock shelter.
No posts in a long time! I've started studying at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and have thereby surrendered both my social and virtual lives. As one of the Prehistory and Quaternary '14 promotion, I've been sent on a trip to Dordogne and the Pyrénées to visit caves, drink wine, eat foie gras and climb up hills in the rain. I don't think I can explain how fantastic and moving it was to stand in a pitch black cave and suddenly see engravings and paintings of mammoths, rhinos, horses and bison appear as the guide lifted his or her lamp and shed light on the cave walls, or to know that Magdalenian adults and children had walked barefoot for hundreds of metres in these cavities (and no, I'm not making stuff up to try and make the story better, researchers did find and date adult and child-sized footprints at Niaux, one of the caves we were lucky enough to visit). So I'm just going to post a couple of pictures instead! Oh and I'd also like to point out that the INRAP (our national preventive archaeology institute) found a mammoth near Paris a few days ago, while excavating a Gallo-Roman site! That's just how random and awesome prehistory can get. [EDIT: funny how things work out, I actually got to do some conservation work on this mammoth! There's an article somewhere on this blog that covers this]

Homo Neandertalensis watching over the valley
from a rock shelter at Les Eyzies.




Bison skeleton, Musée National de Préhistoire,
Les Eyzies-de-Tayac.
Flint debitage explained, Musée National de Préhistoire.

Thursday 16 August 2012

My toilet placement with YAT

 I'm just back from a four week placement with the York Archaeological Trust (helping out on the ArchLive! training dig), and as I'm stuck in my new (tiny) flat with my dog and no furniture, I thought I'd take the student experience as far as possible and start working on something useless. So here's a new article! First, I'd like to thank the trainees and the supervisors again for all their help, hard work and singing rooster impersonations. I had a great time and almost didn't want to come home (but then I thought about the food and the weather and I changed my mind).

Non-staged photos of my awesome trainees, weeks 2-4.





Second, I'd like to tell anybody who's got an interest for field archaeology and a bit of spare money (or a lot, if they don't happen to live in the UK) that if they're looking for a training dig, they should look no further. ArchLive! runs every summer in York and allows trainees to do a bit of everything, from digging to planning, finds processing and barbecuing. And if you've spent so much time volunteering on digs that you're as poor as a Church mouse (yes, there is a theme developing here), you can apply for a placement position and spend your days running wheelbarrows, demolishing brick inspection chambers, cracking tasteless jokes and passing on your extensive knowledge to your amazed trainees. For more information, see ArchLive!'s facebook page, their site diaries or their website.


Conscientiously scrubbing Victorian grime off pots and pipes. 

 I'll leave the site interpretation to the YAT people, as I have a sneaking suspicion that some out-of-place feature is going to contradict everything we thought we knew about the back yards of the rather shabby Victorian terraced houses of Carmelite Street, their bad builders and  their  failed attempts at improving sanitation. Suffice it to say that I have proudly excavated two ceramic tipper toilets and a palimpsest of drainpipes, puzzling brick structures, walls and rubbly make-up deposits. The toilets (which require the tipper to be full of water for the flushing mechanism to do its job) have been put in in several contiguous back yards, seemingly during one improvement phase, in order to try and make the sanitary conditions of the houses more acceptable, but they clearly didn't meet the health and safety requirements as all the houses were pulled down in the 1930s. To my despair, my placement was over before the whole drainage system was exposed, and I'll have to wait for the supervisors' conclusions as to how exactly the whole thing worked and why it wasn't so great.    


A non-scaled, north arrow-less picture of the tipper toilet of 11 Carmelite Street. Take that, good archaeological practices.



Anyway. Thanks to the magic of single context recording, we now all master the difficult arts of taming the dumpy level, off-setting and drawing plans, filling in context cards in a fraction of a second, and taking lovely scaled pictures. A few exciting finds came out of "my" section (anything excavated by "my" trainees is "mine". That's just how it works). A clay pipe bowl with a different man in profile on each side, a nude woman from another clay pipe, some bits of medieval pottery, a bead and a potential giant dog tooth, but no dead prostitute.



We were lucky enough to get quite a lot of sun, so we were able to sit outside and enjoy the weather while processing finds, ie washing a load of Victorian rubbish and of dead people from a nearby medieval charnel that was being excavated by YAT too. We had more fun than would be considered "normal" or "sane" trying to match bones together and got a bit sad whenever we pulled children's bones out of their plastic bags, but it was all very interesting. Sorting and bagging finds went smoothly enough, and sorting small bits of shell, charcoal and other sieving residues from soil samples was more fun than it sounds (a little bit). So I might just have to go back next year and visit more pubs  do more archaeology. Or maybe I should get a job? Who knows.

Evaaaa! Pass me my trowel!
     

Friday 15 June 2012

I iz a published author!

I haven't been able to write much lately (Part II of my History of Violence will eventually be published, I haven't given up on it!) BUT I received a copy of The Archaeological Review from Cambridge with my own little article in it. When I say "article", I really mean "book review". So, I don't have "a proven track record and extensive publications on [any] subject" yet, but I'm working on it. I had a great time writing the review (and I got a free book worth £75 for my personal library), so I'd really recommend book-review publishing to any graduate student who wants to eventually publish their research, as it's easier than writing an article but still an excellent way to get acquainted with the publishing process and with a number of obscure writing conventions. Anyway, the article is online here. It's on Scarre's latest book on the Neolithic of Brittany (which I enjoyed a lot).

Also, special thanks need to go to Danika Parikh, the reviews editor, who was a pleasure to work with. That is all.

Sunday 13 May 2012

Field-walking with Daisy

You know how it's always people walking their dogs who discover dead bodies? Well, I don't walk my dog early enough in the morning for that. And I can't imagine anyone disposing of a recently- or not so recently- murdered victim in the field behind our house. Anyway, I still get to find stuff when running after the dog. Mostly it's barbecue waste and not-very-exciting pottery. But yesterday, while walking in a freshly ploughed field, I stumbled upon a lovely little flint blade, with a plump percussion bulb, compression rings and maybe even some retouches. I'm a little bit excited about it because apart from a pair of bronze bracelets and a possible Bronze Age barrow, I couldn't find any mentions of prehistoric activity or of lithic finds in Malpas (Cheshire) anywhere. Anything pre-Roman is really quite rare here, as far as we know, although you don't have to go very far out of the parish of Malpas to find possible Neolithic occupations and Iron Age hillforts.

So here's a picture of our little friend. It's just under 4 centimeters long, with a bit of cortex left on the distal end and a few negatives of previously knapped-off bits on the dorsal face. Given the form of the bulb, I'd say it was probably made with a hard hammer. It has an eraillure on the bulb, and it's triangular in section.

You tell me what this little guy was arrested for. Nice mugshot.



We also got a few other bits of flint, one of them largely covered in cortex and exhibiting what looks like part of a striking platform and the negative of compression rings.

Edit 14/05/12: We found another blade today, in a different field not very far away from the one in which we found the first blade. It's very different though, with the bulb and compression rings much more diffuse, possibly suggesting soft-hammer percussion. There are very extensive retouches on the dorsal face, my guess being that they were made using pressure-flaking. This is a really lovely little tool.

Unless there's a hobbyist in the neighbourhood who keeps dropping worked flint everywhere in order to confuse us, Malpas was occupied earlier than we thought.

While walking in the fields, we were quite surprised to see that there were a lot of pebbles everywhere, so we thought we might be in an post-glacial valley. It turns out, as pointed out in a 2003 archaeological assessment of Malpas by the Cheshire County Council, that "at Domesday the town [Malpas] was called Depenbech which means ‘at the deep valley with a stream in it’". I thought that the local substrate, red sandstone, could tell us a little bit more about the geology of the area, as it forms in specific conditions. According to this website, the Sandstone Ridge, made of layers of sandstone and pebble beds, formed in the Triassic era in semi-arid desertic conditions (who would have thought?). Forward to the last glaciation and the region was under a huge ice-sheet which depressed the surface of the earth and, while receding at the end of the Ice Age, dropped loads of boulders and ice-worn pebbles picked up in northern Britain while it was moving southward. Now, the pebbles make perfect sense.

I'm also posting a picture of my dog, because it's totally relevant to this article.


Daisy McWooferson, treasure hunter.

Thursday 10 May 2012

A History of Violence: Part I

In archaeology, much like in entertaining, the most popular things are often either the grimmest or the most glamorous. This new post is more about gloom than glitter: we're going to take a look at one of modern human's most ancient pastimes - no, I'm not talking about fooling around with professional booby-flashers - warfare. Of course, there is no need to dig up ancient bones to think about violence, as it is just as alive now as it ever was. But how long has Man indulged in the sweet sound of its neighbour's skull crashing under a well- placed blow? Some of the evidence, and in particular that provided by broken, mangled or badly treated human remains- still hits home thousands of years after the events with a surprising intensity, and researchers have long tried to give back to silent remains and quiet battle sites the screaming voices they have lost.

"Hank always complained about his bad back."
Neolithic violences, flint projectile meets human vertebrae.
Musée des Antiquités Nationales, St Germain-en-Laye


Warfare at its origins was probably very different from what comes to our minds when we think about war. Various parameters can be compared. How many casualties? Who are the victims? Who fights: professional soldiers, conscripted/mobilised individuals, warriors? What are the tactics used and the nature of the combats? What is the value of the life of a soldier/civilian and how many deaths are the opponents prepared to accept for a particular cause? What are they fighting, or what are they fighting for? Are they fighting at home or abroad? Are people dying as a direct consequence of military action, or because of famine and disease brought by the war?

The way we conduct and envisage warfare has evolved a great deal, and it is difficult to imagine that, while the nations involved in the Afghan war Coalition find it increasingly hard to justify and cope with the deaths of approximately 2900 professional soldiers over 10 and a half years (so far, and with over 22,600 wounded soldiers to add to the victim count),  one estimation of the number of civilian deaths suggests a death toll of  12,500 to 14,700 as of June 2011. During the recent debate between the then candidates to the French presidential elections, Hollande and Sarkozy were asked when they would finally pull French troops out of Afghanistan. France has lost 83 soldiers there, and because of doubts surrounding the reason and the relevance of its presence in Afghanistan, these 83 deaths abroad are more than the French were prepared to accept. In very different circumstances and at a time when wars were fought differently and by different people, the Battle of the Somme alone, in 1916, lasted 4 and a half months and claimed the lives of  an estimated 146,431 allied troops. The Allied lost over 9.4 million soldiers in the War.

Understanding modern warfare is complicated, not least because of the various interests, official or not, which are at stake for the groups involved. Identifying and understanding warfare through archaeological remains is another task altogether.

According to Keeley, primitive warfare is generally described by anthropologists as less deadly in terms of numbers than modern warfare. Some authors consider that wars can only occur between states or other "complex" socio-political units, but in my opinion, this assumption is contradicted by the record. I suppose it's down to how one defines the word "warfare".

No, not this kind of primitive warfare.


Researchers are divided about the degree of violence prehistoric Europeans visited upon each-other. Some see signs everywhere, others see only ritual, and others yet are a lot more cautious about their interpretations. Identifying ancient warfare isn't as straightforward as we'd think: not only is a violent death not always recognisable when there is a skeleton to look at, often, there are no remains to study at all. Any wound not affecting the skeleton will go unnoticed, and of course not every bone in the skeleton comes out of a multi-century-spanning nap in the ground all fresh and pristine, allowing the osteoarchaeologist to admire all its potential cuts and breaks. Healed wounds can be distinguished from non-healed ones, but making the difference between a lethal blow and a bone accidentally smashed by careless undertakers while burying the body can be impossible. As for some of our favourite bits of evidence for violence, they too can be misleading. A parry fracture! Someone was defending themselves against an enemy. Or a brutal spouse. Or their own clumsiness.
"Here's a flesh wound that osteoarchaeologists will detect all right"


To make it even better - we'd all hate it if it was simple -  weapons from the Palaeolithic up to the end of the Neolithic aren't just weapons, they're agricultural tools (axes, adzes) or hunting equipment (arrowheads). And even when swords and shields make their appearance, they turn out to not always be functional weapons. Even practices such as decapitation don't always point to an armed conflict: what about ancestor cults? Some unusual deposits can also be the result of a violent answer to a crisis that does not involve warfare - I'm looking at you, human sacrifice.

Of course, this is not to say that ancient warfare can never be recognised, or that it doesn't exist. There is plenty of disturbing/alarming/saddening evidence for Prehistoric organised violence, so much so that it places the horrifying historic and contemporary conflicts we have learnt about at school or followed with the News within a long tradition. I wouldn't say that by putting them into perspective, one can diminish the horror attached to them, though. If anything, the continuing nature of interpersonal, large-scale violence points to a bleak future. Erm. Enough deep thinking, it's time for me to go eat some chocolate biscuits. I'll actually start talking about the evidence for prehistoric warfare in Europe in Part II.



References (more to come in Part II):

Keeley, L.H., 1996, War Before Civilization, the Myth of the Peaceful Savage, Oxford University Press, Oxford

Thursday 19 April 2012

The joys of 3D modelling

I have had quite a bit of spare time lately and have decided to try and use it in a productive way, so I started learning to model stuff in 3D. I'm using Google SketchUp because it's free and easily downloadable, and the basics are quick to master. There is also a wealth of SketchUp tutorials on the Internet, which makes more advanced techniques less of a nightmare to understand. It's still touch-and-go for me though, and it takes me a ridiculously long time to build anything, so I won't be modelling Hogwarts anytime soon.

In case anyone is wondering what this has to do with archaeology - and I'm sure that no-one is - 3D modelling can be very useful for tasks such as attempting restitutions of sites that have been largely destroyed. In other words, if:
- there is not much to take a photo of, but enough features to formulate hypotheses concerning the former shape and organisation of a building or a site, and
- you're useless at drawing,
then 3D's a good option to produce illustrations for books, videos, etc. Because without illustrations, it's all a bit boring.

Anyway, here's my first attempt at SketchUpping a site. It's purely a modelling exercise, and not in any way a scientific statement. I've copied existing restitutions the best I could, but I haven't studied the site extensively in order to provide an illustration that would reflect my own intellectual convictions. I don't know how accurate this is or what Shrine VI 10 looked like in any of its phases, and this was not the point of the exercise.  Dimensions are very approximate too, as they weren't relevant to the project. The decorative elements gave me an awful time, so I apologise in advance for how weird they look. Simple architectural features are a pleasure to model even for a noob, but anything else definitely isn't.  I've chosen a room from Çatalhüyük because it's a fantastic site (this 3D thing gave me an excuse to read about it again, bonus!), but most importantly it was just challenging enough for me. I would have loved to model Notre-Dame, but I'm not ready (or quite brave enough) for this. Making this simple picture almost drove me mad, but I still think 3D's a skill worth mastering, so I'll keep trying.


Here are the restitutions I've used: this room from the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, and this drawing (attributed to James Mellaart on various websites, but whose complete source I haven't found yet). Once more, I should probably feel guilty about the lack of academic rigour in this post, but  I'm not, so ha! I won't do it again, though. Promise. Go check out the Çatalhüyük excavations website  if you need your daily dose of actual - and amazing - archaeology.

Tuesday 20 March 2012

It's all about perception!

It's that time of the year again - the Spring Equinox. Days have been getting longer and sunnier, and while I celebrate by having lunch in the garden, others will be performing neopagan/druidic rites. Of course, exactly how and to what extent these modern rites can be traced back to prehistoric times is debatable to say the least, and ancient druids, being posterior by a long time to the monuments where modern ones carry out their rituals, played no role in their construction. However, collective memory, astronomy and ancient ritual aren't complete strangers. The significance of astronomical events with regards to Prehistoric cosmologies, world-views and architectures has long been the object of much scientific (and pseudo-scientific) debate. In this blog entry, I'd like to get thinking about old and new ritual, and changing perceptions. That is, my own changing perceptions as well as prehistoric/historic people's. I'll take Avebury as an example because I have a bit of material about it.

Because Spring makes me happy, I'll throw in a few awesomesauce pictures of sunsets/rises. Today's equinox is quite obviously a shameless excuse for me to post them, as they were in fact taken around the Winter solstice, so that if anyone's standing in the passages of Maes Howe or Newgrange waiting for the last rays of sun to illuminate their feet, they're in for a big disappointment-especially as it is now 20:54.


Morning sunlight coming through the roof-box above the door at Newgrange, Boyne Valley (Ireland). Picture: www.newgrange.com

Passage to the central chamber of Maes Howe (Orkney), illuminated.
Picture: www.maeswhowe.co.uk

Stonehenge, Wiltshire. Picture: www.philosophy.christopher-roberts.co.uk


Among other Neolithic sites, the Avebury monument complex - and in particular its remarkably large henge enclosure - was once thought to have been related to the practice of astronomy (a theory famously defended by Alexander Thom) or to rituals designed around the seasons- with more or less convincing evidence. However, while the architectures of the monuments pictured above are widely recognised as being tightly related to astronomical considerations, such a relationship seems more dubious in the case of Avebury, and the title of "observatory" has been discarded by most authors. The irregularity of the henge's circular shape, explained by Thom as the deliberate setting of the stones in precise positions calculated thanks to an impressive astronomical knowledge, is now explained in simpler (less exciting?) terms. Being the largest henge archaeologists know of - so vast that it now encloses part of the village of Avebury, the enclosure may simply have been trickier than others to make perfectly circular. Maybe more importantly, it seems reasonable to assume that what the builders wanted to achieve was the illusion of circularity rather than circularity itself. Which brings us to the theme of perception.

 Restitution of the Avebury landscape by William Stukeley, 1743. Among others, the henge, the outer and inner stone circles, the Beckampton and West Kennet standing stone avenues, Silbury Hill, the Sanctuary on Overton Hill and Windmill Hill are represented here. A number of structures, such as the Cove and the Obelisk, are not visible.


Perception and experience are key to the understanding of ritual sites. Those who used them certainly did so with various degrees of understanding and shifting motivations, and the fact that they are still used by certain religious groups illustrate the constant reinvention and re-appropriation of both monuments and traditions, but who knows how rapidly and to what extent rites, beliefs and understandings changed in character and nature over the time of the Prehistoric use of the Avebury ritual landscape?

I'd like to go back to the notion of varying degrees of understanding. When looking at remains from such remote periods as the Neolithic, I often find that I almost forget that they were lived in and/or interacted with in a normal way, not in some sort of model, error-free way.  People were no wiser than we are, they made mistakes, loved to show off their wealth and high social status, and it makes no doubt that some of them were complete idiots. It's possible that some people were more interested in religion than others, and it seems highly probable that they had different grasps on the meaning of symbols, ritual acts, etc. As beliefs are not necessarily static even when they are long-lasting, different generations would also probably have been more or less knowledgeable about some religious and ritual aspects. The same monuments, gestures, rites and myths may resonate differently even in the minds of people who share a common culture.


Fra Angelico,  Annunciation (Cortone) 1434
Take this Annunciation by Fra Angelico, for instance. Anybody would recognise it as a Christian image. Most people would recognise Gabriel informing Mary of her imminent pregnancy and Adam and Eve being chased out of Eden as a reminder of why mankind now needs a saviour, but even amongst Christians not all the codes would be understood by everybody. The enclosed garden as a symbol of fertility and virginity, the columns, the Dove,  the flowers and numerous other symbols will either be viewed as charged with meaning or as simple elements of decorum. Painted as part of an altarpiece, this Cortone Annunciation would probably have been understood more or less thoroughly according to the level of education of the people who saw it. Another Annunciation painted by Fra Angelico for the monastery of San Marco in Florence does not feature the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, or indeed many of the symbols found on the Cortone retable. It also lacks the bling of the Cortone version. It is plainer, perhaps because it is addressed to a very different sort of worshippers.

Fra Angelico, Annunciation (San Marco Monastery), around 1451


















Going back to Neolithic Avebury, it is of course always hazardous to draw parallels between entirely different periods. Education had a lot to do with the various levels of understanding in Medieval times, and it continues to do so. Next to nothing can be said about education before writing, but it is possible that some individuals or groups of people had privileged access to knowledge, and maybe, as suggested by Pollard & Reynolds, to some parts of  the monuments such as the Cove and the Obelisk, arrangements of large stones located inside the inner stone circles of the henge. Rites of initiation may have controlled the access to these areas. Ironically, archaeologists can't see the whole picture of the Avebury complex any more than the people taking part in rituals did. We have precise maps of what is left of the complex, they knew precisely what they were doing there. Well... some of them did anyway.


This entry's mainly based on whatever was going through my mind these past few days and an old essay I've revisited (I'm the neopagan to my own papers... woop!) Here are the references of the few books mentioned above. And a few others that have helped me form opinions/understandings. The good stuff in this entry probably comes from them in some form or other. The silly stuff is mine.

-Bradley, R. Altering the Earth, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1993
-Pollard, J. & Reynolds, A. Avebury, the Biography of a Landscape, Tempus, Stroud, 2002
-Scarre, C. (ed.), Monuments and Landscapes in Atlantic Europe, Perception and Society during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, Routledge, London & New York, 2002
-Scarre, C. Monuments mégalithiques de Grande-Bretagne et d'Irlande, Errance, Paris, 2005
-Thom, A. Megalithic Sites in Britain, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1967
-Tilley, C. The Materiality of Stone, Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology, Berg, Oxford & New York, 2004
-Stukeley, W. Abury, a Temple of the British Druids, with Some Others Described, London, 1743

Pâté and roast digger: Gréez-sur-Roc 2010-2011

Digging in France is very different from digging in the UK. It's usually free, with accommodation (or at least a place to pitch a tent) and food thrown in and paid for by whoever's excavating the site. There are less chances of trenches being flooded and more chances of ending up with a sunstroke.  Gréez-sur-Roc (in the Sarthe département) had all of this. Delicious food, starry skies, scorching heat and a couple of locals bordering on insanity.

The vast Neolithic settlement site of Gréez, discovered by local teacher and researcher Jean Jousse, has been excavated every summer from 2003 to 2011 by J.N. Guyodo of the University of Nantes, with E. Mens studying the surface of stones and the traces left by successive detachments of matter and A. Blanchard carrying out her doctoral research. The village itself owes its name to the rocky substrate of the region, with Gréez being derived from 'Grès', meaning 'sandstone'. Because of the presence of sandstone close to the topsoil, the site has never been subjected to deep ploughing and has remained almost intact.

Neolithic people made use of some of the natural cavities in the sandstone, using them and creating new ones to hold the wooden posts of their houses, as illustrated in the following picture. Not all the houses were oriented in the same way and they may have been organised around a central village place.


A huge amount of pottery fragments and flint flakes and tools has been recovered from the site, the distribution of which will be studied thanks to the recording of the location of all material found in the Neolithic strata of the site. Faunal remains have not been preserved because of the acidity of the sandy soil.

Unearthing two 6000 year-old polished axes while digging next to house remains may be one of the best ways to relate to Neolithic people and to get thinking about their work and their daily lives. Maybe for the first time since the end of my childhood, I have been truly amazed again. Among the significant 2010 finds was something that was, at the time, interpreted as a pendant made out of a broken Villeneuve-St-Germain schist bracelet. This VSG influence would then be one of several suggested cultural influences for this site (Chambon and Cerny types of pottery having also been recognised there, as of 2006).


As we students need to be entertained during rainy days, we decided to put our zooarchaeological skills to the test by putting back together the (relatively recent) skeleton of a cat, without much success. Apart from people being thrown into the village's old lavoir (where women used to wash clothes before running water in houses was cool) and from the lovely cities around, one of the major bonuses of this dig was the proximity of a farm where they sold amazing rillettes and foie gras. Nom.

Gate at La Ferté-Bernard (Sarthe). Pic from the town's website.


More information about the site (in French) here and here.

Monday 19 March 2012

Newbie Digger: Fetternear '09

A newcomer to the world of archaeology, I prepared for my first dig in 2009 with slightly mixed feelings. Excitement: I'm  finally getting to learn how to use a trowel like a boss. Hope: what if I find something significant (be it a rather underwhelming bit of pottery)? Anxiety: what if I turn out to be as useless and counter-productive as a tunnelling pest?

This is what happened: 3 weeks of rain, severe sunburns, and a budding love for pig mandibles and undecorated ceramic.

After a flight, two train journeys and a bus ride, I was picked up by the site supervisor and given my first task: pitching my tent in a nettle-infested field. Needless to say I picked the wrong place and had to move it on the next day.

Fetternear House and nice blue sky- we were later punished for this "heatwave" by unceasing rain. 
Our site, hidden in the almost virgin wilderness of rural Aberdeenshire (at a staggering 20 minute walk from the nearest chippie and pub), consisted of a ruined, mostly medieval castle and a number of trenches, some of which had been sleeping under tarpaulins for a few years. The excavation was led by Dr Penny Dransart (Lampeter University) as part of the Scottish Episcopal Palaces Project, exploring the specificities of Scottish medieval episcopal architecture. Successive occupations, from Prehistoric times up to the early 20th century, have been identified on this site. The castle itself, first excavated in the 19th century, is now known to have been surrounded by a moat, and has had different uses and construction phases (some of them noticeable in the above picture) until its destruction by fire in 1919. It has been the summer residence of the Bishops of Aberdeen in medieval times. From 1550 to 1932, it has been owned by the Leslie family, whose international connections (they owned land in what are now Liechtenstein, Austria, Slovenia and the Czech Republic) could account for some Continental-like features. More information about the project and the site herehere and here. The reports by Dr Dransart form the basis of the information relayed here.

Despite a few setbacks (the weather from Hell, causing trenches to flood, structures to collapse and diggers to curse), Fetternear '09 was a relatively fruitful season, the star find being a well-preserved medieval wooden beam, which was interpreted as a part of a bridge. We appeared on a BBC 2 series that I wasn't allowed to watch (thanks for that, iPlayer!) because I lived in France when it was broadcast, so that I can only trust my fellow diggers when they say that I 'looked awful' in it.
My precious! First ever finds' tray.
Stones. From a wall. Destroyed by the wind and rain.








Apart from archaeological skills per se, I've learnt some invaluable surviving tips on this dig: 
-never forget to bring a waterproof jacket and hand moisturiser, 
-eat properly (beer can sometimes act as food in cases of  famine, but not for lunch/tea/onsite), 
-one can get sunburns in Scotland, 
-buy your own trowel and never lose sight of it, 
-don't let anyone go near your tent with a padlock, they will lock you out (or in),
-never pitch your tent near the portaloo. Take the wind into account in your calculations.

When following these basic rules, digging can be disturbingly addictive.