The Accidental Archaeologist

France, The Sequel

I assure you, this post is not a case of deja vu…I’m simply back in France on the same project at the same time as last year. Once more, I found myself on the road to the Continent for two weeks of sun, wine, and Iron Age artefacts. Y’all may recall that last year, I had just finished a two-week research trip to Scotland to work on my master’s thesis, and then quickly turned around and hopped a train to the little village of Tincry in the Lorraine region of northeast France. Last year’s dig was actually a dig, with two weeks of excavating a massive trench through the inner and outer walls of an Iron Age hill fort. The professor in charge of the dig thought that he would not be working again on the project this year, because he needed to work up his existing material for publication. However, it was decided a few months ago that he needed to come back over once more to give a big lecture for local politicians in order to win a bid for more funding for future work here. Since he was coming over again anyway, he decided to bring a small team with him to do the final bits of paperwork, planning, and drawing for the upcoming publication. I was asked to come along again, but this time to spend pretty much all of my time drawing. As an added bonus, though, this time I get paid for the trip!

As it turns out, the rest of the team consists of two other women, an American and a Brit, and one other guy, a German student who was here last year. Unfortunately, none of them were coming with us from Bristol, so the prof and I had to make the trip by ourselves on Friday all the way from Bristol to the town of Delme, where we are staying. It was a LONG drive. We took my favourite Landrover (the “new” green Landie) from the department, and I got to do the driving on the UK side of the trip. That was OK, because, as y’all know, I’ve become quite comfortable with British driving. We made a beeline for Dover in order to catch the ferry to Calais. Unfortunately, the ferry was delayed by a half hour or so, but we managed to get to France without getting too far behind schedule. Once on the French side, the prof took over driving for the rest of the trip. I was worried that conversation would run out fairly quickly, as he’s much less talkative than myself, but we had lots to discuss between the project and the current state of the university and our department, so the drive was actually fairly enjoyable. We waited until we crossed into Belgium before stopping for a very late lunch/early dinner and fuel. There I had my first major encounter with the language barrier. We went into a little restaurant in a mall for food, and I found myself alone trying to order something hot from the grill. The poor guy behind the counter spoke nothing but French, so I tried through a mixture of mumbled words and sign language to indicate that I wanted a small steak. He asked a series of questions, none of which I understood, so I simply shrugged and let him prepare it any way he saw fit. I did manage to get across a preference for mashed rather than french fried potatoes and a little gravy, but that pretty much exhausted my abilities. I left hoping my ear would become a little better attuned to French over the next few days.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We made one more quick stop in Luxembourg to take advantage of the very low fuel prices there, and then it was a straight shot down past Metz to Delme. We arrived a little after 10PM, but still had to make one stop at the home of the deputy mayor so that we could get the keys to the primary school which serves as home sweet home. Of course, one can’t just drop by the house, chat for a minute, and take off again with key in hand in France. The stop involved the usual French hospitality and an extended period of chatting. We were ushered to a couple of seats at a patio table while the monsieur went to fetch us a couple of beers and the madame chatted away in rapid French. She tried to ask me a few questions, but past the occasion “oui” and “non” and a few scattered “bon”s and “merci”s, I couldn’t contribute much. The prof explained that I was English and didn’t speak any French. She sadly admitted that she spoke no English, only French and German. I brightened at this and added in halting German “I speak a little German.” She was pleased with this, and suddenly all three of them switched to mostly German with some French mixed in. This didn’t improve my ability to add to the conversation much, but at least I had a better idea of what was going on. Finally, two beers and an hour later, we bid them goodbye and climbed back in the Landie for the short trip over to the school. I was quite familiar with the routine once we got there, and happily settled in in one of the classrooms. It’s pretty basic accommodations, just an air mattress on a wooden floor, but it’s quiet and I was so exhausted, I pretty much instantly fell asleep, despite the fact that I was still sweating in the stifling heat.

So that was Day One of the great French adventure. I’m afraid I will be a little behind for a day or two on my posts, since there has been so much going on that I haven’t had time to sit down and write them up. I would knock out a couple more right now to get everything up to date, but it’s still a gorgeous evening outside, and there is a demand that I come sit out with everyone else and have a beer and be social. More to come soon, though!