The Accidental Archaeologist

The Big Dig Begins

I should finish today’s blog with how Monday night’s saga ended. You see, it wasn’t quite over with Mark waiting to bring the last students from Norfolk. I knew the last flight had been delayed untill 11:00pm, so I figured they wouldn’t arrive until 02:30am, with a half an hour to clear baggage claim and then a three hour drive down the coast. Many of us stayed up quite late chatting excitedly and catching up with the folks we haven’t seen since November. But by 01:00, even the hardiest of us were starting to fade. I was trying hard to ignore my internal British clock, which was saying that I had managed to stay up for 24 hrs at that point. Ultimately, though, I realized I wasn’t going to stay up for another hour and a half waiting on Mark if no one else was staying up with me to distract me with chatter, so I turned in. It was just as I crawled into bed, though, that it occured to me that I hadn’t told Mark which rooms had been allocated for himself and a couple other students. With a groan, I rolled back out of bed, pulled out my mobile (recently equipped with a US SIM card) and tried to figure out how to dial a UK number to reach Mark’s mobile. The connection was terrible, but, when I finally got through, I ended up talking to one of the students, who informed me that they were only a few miles away (an hour and a half ahead of schedule!?!), but that they had just finished with the sheriff’s deputy who had pulled Mark over for doing twice the speed limit. Reportedly, the first thing Mark said upon rolling down the window was, “I’m terribly sorry, officer, but you see I’m British.” I was appalled to hear how fast he had been going, because, ordinarily, they might have slapped some handcuffs on him and hauled him straight to jail…and guess who’d have been stuck trying to figure out how to bail him out at 2am? That’s right…the trusty grad student. Luckily for me, Mark is magic, and somehow managed to Jedi mind-trick the guy into letting him off with a mere warning (not even a fine!). When I called, the deputy had just pulled away, and they realized they couldn’t get the car started again because of some weird security feature. Mark then asked if I could come find them and see if I could figure it out. This project was sure getting off to a wonderful start. I did pull on some jeans and head down the road in my gigantic Lincoln Town Car (forgot what it was like to drive such a tank), but I hadn’t gotten far down the road before I saw them heading toward me. I hastily pointed out their rooms, bade them a weary good night, and gratefully slid back into bed for a brief few hours’ sleep.

I meant to sleep in until 08:30, as we were delaying breakfast until 09:30 the next morning, but I was awakened with a jolt to the sound of Mark’s rental car blaring its horn right outside my door at 07:00. He had apparently accidentally hit the panic button instead of the trunk unlatching button on the key fob. He’d woken me from a typical “disaster” dream I often have when I’m stressed that usually involves my ship either sinking or catching fire…or both, and I knew there was no way I was getting back to sleep. Instead, muttering darkly, I got dressed, grabbed my computer, and headed across the street to get a cup of coffee and write the previous blog. About 08:30, Mark starting getting impatient, so we started to shuttle folks over the massive field kitchen set up by a couple of our American crew right near the dig site. They had already started on a massive Southern breakfast of bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, toast, coffee, and (best of all) a huge pot of grits. None of the British students had ever even heard of grits before, so I badgered them to at least give them a try before turning up their noses. I didn’t get many converts, but I cheerfully noted that just left more for me.
Once we were all properly fed and in high spirits, we held court in the form of a safety briefing and general orientation. It was almost amusing to see everyone’s eyes get wider and wider as we kept remembering to add yet another dangerous or poisonous plant or animal to the long list we were describing to them. I’ve been a bit concerned about the snakes especially, as the area has a LOT of copperheads and water moccasins, and they’ve been out and about in the warm weather. Oh yes, I should mention that it was sunny, gorgeous, and in the 70’s (F) with just the slightest breeze pretty much all day long. Couldn’t be more perfect digging weather, but also excellent snake weather. With all of this gone over, it was time to start digging. We sheperded the large band of 16 or 17 diggers through the woods to our site. It’s fairly open woodland, with just small scrub and trees, but the first task was a long slog clearing all around the area staked out for a 3meter by 5 meter trench. We had an axe and a few bits and pieces of heavy clearing equipment, but it quickly became evident we needed more, so someone was dispatched to the hardware store, and returned with two shiny new axes, and a badly-needed machete.

The rest of the day was just spent digging the first few levels of the trench. Besides a whole lot of roots, this ground is very easy to dig, as it’s entirely sand. Sorta like playing in a giant kid’s sandbox. As we expected, the top layers were chock full of artifacts, but all kinda boring 19th century stuff. Everyone’s anxious to get past this bit and down to the interesting earlier levels, but it’s gonna take a little while. Most everyone was thoroughly knackered by the end of the day, since it was constant slinging of dirt into screens. When I called clean-up at around 4:30 or so, there was a rush to hop out of the trench and start dragging tools away. We had managed to excavate 50 cm, which is almost half the depth we need, so we’ll probably finish the first trench out in a couple more days. We already have plans to lay out another similar trench nearby, so we can split our teams and make things a little less crowded in the first trench.

The evening consisted of lots of lounging around with a cold beer and aching limbs interrupted only by a delicious meal of grilled chicken and potato salad (I DO love having Southerners cooking on this project!). Two of our American crew had laid in a stock of Moon Pies and RC Cola so that Andy could experience a real Southern sugar rush, but I was more taken by the pecan pie that was brought out after the meal. We shall eat very well these next couple of weeks. I did try to go for a run before dinner, even made it a kilometer or so down the main road, but a combo of the sun, the work, and not drinking enough water got the better of me, and I made it a long ramble instead, walking 4km up the road towards the next town over, and then back. After dinner, there was nothing anyone could do but sit back with a contended sigh and try to ignore how sore and tired they were.

So, today is the start of Day Two of digging, and I’m having my last cup of coffee before leaving for the field. The sun is struggling up over the horizon, the constant sea breeze is making things a bit chilly, but I can already tell it’ll be another warm, humid day. Better pack up my field kit and start herding the students toward the cars. Just hope there’s another big pot of grits on this morning.