The Accidental Archaeologist
The official on-the-go adventure blog
I’m sure there were a few concerns when a new blog post hadn’t appeared in the last couple of days. I’m afraid it’s because there just wasn’t really anything to report. I woke up bright and early Wednesday morning ready to get started talking to landowners and surveying different areas and then looked out the window to see pouring rain and skies like lead. It was also FREEZING cold. I didn’t mind too much for one day, because I just thought I’d take advantage of a rainy day to get my paperwork out of the way. Unfortunately, the rainy day stretched into three days of pouring rain, thunderstorms and wind. Good news: got a LOT of paperwork out of the way; bad news: didn’t get any survey done.
That brings me to Friday when all of my fellow Brits were flying in to Norfolk. I took off at around 13.30 with one other crew member in two vehicles for the 3.5 hr drive to Norfolk. This is when things started to fall apart. I had received a text message at about 03.00 that morning saying that a few of the students were delayed getting out of Heathrow, and wouldn’t arrive until about 19.30. That was OK, since there was one other coming in at the same time. As I was driving to Norfolk, though, both my UK and US phones started going nuts with text messages and calls from various students stuck in various airports all over the eastern US. It was grim. I’m not sure why air traffic decided to have a meltdown on Friday, but flights were being delayed and cancelled all over the place, and many of my crew were stuck in the madness. When I got to the airport, one large gang arrived only half an hour late, and this included Mark. I told them the bad news about the delays of the rest, but then we realised that everybody could go in one vehicle back to Hatteras while Mark and I waited behind for the rest. One bright spot in the whole mess: a five-hour uninterrupted meeting with my supervisor…quite a handy thing these days.
By this time, we’d received enough details to realise that most of the delayed crew weren’t actually coming in until after 22.00. I was starving, so Mark managed to talk the rental car guys into letting him pick up his car later, and we jumped into my shiny black car (which I have decided to call Shadow) to head to downtown Norfolk in search of dinner. I haven’t been to that part of town in about five years, so my memory of geography is a little hazy. That coupled with my negative sense of direction on land and a stunningly unhelpful road map made for a rather aggravating drive into town, but we eventually found the waterfront and chucked the car into a parking garage. As it was still light, we took a stroll down to the Nauticus centre to take a look at the USS Wisconsin. Of course, as soon as we got to the dock, I noticed some shiny wooden masts with a very distinct rake to them poking up from behind Wisconsin’s bow. “That,” I informed Mark, “can only be one of two ships: Amistad or Pride of Baltimore II. Those are the only ones with masts raked back so far, you wonder how they’re still standing.” Sure enough, we rounded the corner of the dock and saw the smart black hull of Pride of Baltimore II. Mark was quite keen to take a ton of photos of Wisconsin and Pride in the light of the setting sun, but eventually we strolled over to the other side of the dock to see what was going on onboard Pride. As we were standing there, Capt Jan Miles came up on dock, but he wasn’t inclined to chat and I couldn’t expect him to remember a potential deckhand he interviewed 15 years ago. There was a very friendly crewmember named Andrew on deck, though, and I chatted with him for quite awhile. We have a mutual friend now working on Lynx which is currently in Wilmington, NC, and we had a lively talk about tall ship work and archaeology while Mark wandered off to take more photos.
Eventually, though, we had to tear ourselves away and go in search of some food. After a bit of wandering past lots of dark windows, we found an Irish pub to stop at. It was a bit run-down and fairly empty, but the food was cheap and they gave us unlimited coffee refills. We chowed down, drank about a gallon of coffee, and strategised about my thesis, this dig, and the upcoming teaching year. Mark has a plan for an undergrad class next fall that I’m keen to help out on, but more details on that once I know if it’ll happen or not.
We got back to Norfolk airport around 22.00 to the news that the delayed flight was only just boarding in Newark, and it’d be at least an hour before they made it to us. Two of our missing crew made it in before that, and I eventually found myself stretched out on the floor next to the wall of baggage claim with my arm slung wearily over my eyes trying to get “a bit of a kip” (as Mark put it). Our final four stumbled off the plane at around 23.00, beyond tired and walking like zombies. Mark & I practically threw them in the cars (Mark managed to snag a silver Chevy HHR) and took off for Hatteras. And then a miracle happened. Many of you will remember Mark’s brushes with law enforcement last year due to his inability to do anything less than twice the speed limit. I’ve lectured, threatened, and cajoled him numerous times in the lead-up to this trip about the dangers of getting pulled over one more time, but I didn’t really hold out any hope that he would actually pay any attention and slow down. Here’s the thing…he actually followed the speed limit. I know this because he left ahead of me and I went the speed limit, but he only arrived a minute or two ahead of me. I was stunned. We may have converted the guy (finally!). I just hope it’ll stick.
Yesterday was the first day of work. Not much to say there. Spent the morning freaking the new students out with a talk on all of the things that are out to kill you on this island. Their eyes were HUGE by the end of this talk. We didn’t get into the field until lunchtime, and most of the rest of the afternoon was spent stringing out a trench and setting up a couple of test pits. Everyone swung into action quite quickly, and things went fairly smoothly. It’s now early morning of Dig Day 2, and I’m pretty sure a hearty Southern breakfast is about to be served up down in our camp kitchen under the house, so I’ll finish off this long post and get ready for another work day. It’s sunny and warming up, so things are looking brighter for this upcoming week.
