The Accidental Archaeologist

I IS the Film Crew

Day Eight saw the dawn of another warm, sunny day at way-too-early in the morning. I’m actually getting a decent night’s sleep every night, but it feels like less and less. As usual, I dragged myself out of bed and across the road for coffee and internet. Then it was back to the hotel to start herding the gang into cars. At this point, we’ve got a regular convoy of vehicles going back and forth to the site every day. Mark and I had a consult at the site while everyone had first breakfast of toast and coffee. We had to strategize a bit, since our “tetris” archaeology was getting to the point that we would have a whole big floor open at the bottom of all three trenches by midday. Mark wanted to start taking a big chunk out of the artifact recording, since we now have dozens and dozens of bags of stuff, and that meant yet another day I would get to run the site in (mostly) serene smoothness.

Our open floor meant a lot of photoing and recording, and the level it was at was an interesting level anyway for artifact potential, so the media crew had their various cameras at the ready. One had a big, heavy professional-style camera and boom mic, and she was sitting at one point by the edge of the trench looking despondent. I asked what was wrong, and she said she was tired of holding the heavy camera and really just wanted to get down in the trench and have fun with everybody else. That’s when I saw my opportunity. I offered to swap: she plays in the dirt, and I take the camera to film a bit of “site director cam.” She showed me the various buttons and whatnot, and I started recording a few minutes of film from my perspective, narrating the whole time. At one point, I had someone call me over to take a look at a bit of bone he had uncovered, and then I filmed my feet carefully tiptoeing through the shell midden. When I arrived at his side of the trench and looked down at the darker soil, I had to adjust the iris on the camera, so I covered by saying “…and then I get over here where I can take a look…and then I adjust the lighting in my eyes…and then I take a look…” This got a laugh. I think everybody was quite amused by the whole thing. The film student says she’s putting that bit in her film piece (which is basically her dissertation), so I asked if I could get a copy. If I ever manage it, I’ll have to post that bit of video for y’all.

The rest of the day had a few excitements finds-wise. Again (sadly) can’t say too much about them, but I can tell y’all about one of our less confusing finds. The plank I mentioned yesterday turned out to be the more boring reality of a 19th century well, but upon excavation we discovered a square shuttered well enclosure with a barrel sunk in the middle…all of it mostly intact. The poor guy who got to excavate that was up to his shoulders in murky water all day dragging mud out of the bottom. Overall, spirits are still surprisingly high, though, and even he wasn’t too annoyed by getting stuck with that feature.

The other interesting event today was the arrival of one of the archaeologists from the Charleston Museum, Ron. He was one of the two who ran my archaeology field school about five years ago, and he did some excavation here in the Outer Banks back in the 70’s, so he was thrilled to find I was doing a dig in the same spot. He’s here for a couple of days, and I think he’ll even get down in the trench with us and wield a trowel. It’s great to see him and share all of my adventures since I graduated. He’s pretty impressed by the project and the dig itself. Hope he’ll stay that way after seeing the big trench this morning.

Meanwhile, I have to finish my coffee and let the Mayor do some email. Only a couple more serious days of digging before we have to start throwing dirt back in the big hole in the ground. Hope we can get it all done in time!