between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Below is my report for the college folk who are giving me (eventually) a cheque for a very little bit of money.

In other news, the New Cat - did I tell you all about the New Cat? - can now sometimes be convinced to come out from under the bed on his own and jump up on the bed to be made a fuss of. Still not eating or drinking, but settling down a good bit more.

( Report )

I feel sick from too much chocolate and too much sleep. Sloth, thy name is hawkwing_lb. Also gluttony.

Okay. Anyone curious about the Silchester Town Life Project? If not, quit reading now. I'm not going to talk about London, however fascinating it was - I like the city, but it's now too long ago for me to remember details.

Okay. Silchester. In the Roman period the site of Calleva Atrebatum, the town centre of the Atrebates, lay to the east of the modern and medieval village. Calleva itself was occupied from the Iron Age to approximately the late fifth or early sixth century, when it was abandoned for causes that are not yet fully understood. In the medieval period, reoccupation centred to the west of the ancient town, with the exception of a medieval church, and a fortified structure built within the amphitheatre, to the northeast of the walls, known from remains and documentarily from the wars of Stephen and Mathilda.

I can give you the précis of the Roman occupation, or you can look it up on Wikipedia or on the Silchester Town Life Project's website, both of which will probably give you a more comprehensive picture than I at present have the patience for.

That's the overview. The view from the ground is a lot more uncomfortable.

I arrived there in the middle of the fortnight-long heatwave. The first week was made of dust and sweat and sunburn: fortunately the only part of me that tends to burn without my noticing are my ears, but damn, my ears spent the next two weeks peeling.

First we cleaned. Three and four days cleaning weeds and the top layer of dirt of the previous year's excavation: the staff - of which there were about forty, to a hundred-some students - arrived a week beforehand and did the worst of the dirty preparation work. So that first week was spent in trowelling, learning the basics of planning, taking levels, recording, dealing with small finds, environmental sampling, the principles of the archaeological matrix.

I learned a lot. There were talks and lectures on various things over the course of the next three weeks - ask me and I'll tell you about the day I spent doing experimental archaeology, running around in fields and playing with molten lead.

I also learned I don't have the patience or the temperament for field archaeology. It requires too much recording and fiddling and patience and physical contortionism and tolerance for mud and dust and insects and camping and outside living. Which I don't mind so much, but all of these things at once? Is just a little more than I can bear. Also, other people. So many, twenty-four hours a day, six days a week.

I like what happens in environmental, and I am fascinated by objects. What they tell us, how we use them, how we conserve them, how we find out what they are and what they do. The post-excavation process is intensely interesting. But actual archaeology itself is not my first love. It's not even a love.

I think it's incredibly valuable, and very useful to the historian to understand how we gather the information that we use - and the flaws and drawbacks of that process: gods, the amount of information we can lose is honestly frightening, and so much of it's piecemeal and fragmentary and dependent on the conditions of survival - and so I hope to continue spending at least a couple of weeks per summer doing actual excavation. But in future I'll be concentrating on my ancient and dead languages, and my modern language skills, and maybe look for some training in post-excavation and conservation stuffs, since I've learned that I do not want to make a career out of field archaeology its own self.

Thus you have my story. Apply within for further boring details, including of scenery, food, locale and personnel if such interests you.

If not, I should put some thought to writing a)the report for Reading that I have to do for my 20 ECTs, and b)the report for Trinity that justifies the two hundred euro grant they gave me to help with my costs.

Coming home - it's a dislocation. Nothing's changed, except the cat is gone. But I feel rather different: coming home by train and ferry, across Wales, into Dublin Bay... the evening sunlight on Howth Head and Ireland's eye made my chest tight enough to hurt.

Even very small parts of the world are very wide. It amazes me that we cross them without thinking.

This is the list of books I read while I was away. I went rather overboard in the Waterstones in Reading.


Books 2009: 54-65

fiction.


54. Karl Schroeder, Sun of Suns.

An interesting book, but I found the world rather more interesting than the characters, who were in general rather bland and uncompelling. The world, however, was fascinating, with the only gravity created by means of centrifugal force, and suns brought to life by human endeavour. Very sciency. But not a riveting read.


55. Stephen Hunt, The Court of the Air.

An interesting world, with steammen, and crabmen, and parliamentarians who beat each other with debating sticks, and if the characters had come a little bit more alive I would've enjoyed it far better.


56. Linnea Sinclair, Shades of Dark.

Reasonably engaging romantic space opera.


57-60. Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors, Murder Must Advertise, Unnatural Death and Strong Poison.

I always enjoy Sayers' work, but I'd forgotten how unpleasantly racist and anti-Semitic Unnatural Death is in parts. Decent Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries.


61. Laurel K. Hamilton, Skin Trade.

This is almost a real book, with a decent attempt at a murder plot. And less bad sex than usual.


62. Marie Brennan, In Ashes Lie.

The sequel to Midnight Never Come. A 17th century novel of Faerie, politics, fire, plague, and all the other interesting things that happen in good books. I'm impressed, not only with the degree of historical research, but with the step up in terms of complexity of storytelling and character development. It's a very good book. I really enjoyed it.


nonfiction.


63. Robin Waterfield, Xenophon's Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age.

The subtitle's a little misleading, seeing as it's more a discussion of the Anabasis of Xenophon - logistics and realities of the campaign, discussions of Xenophon's character, motivations, and the themes of his writing: the idea of a "Golden Age" is hardly touched on. I found it rather interesting, but it needs footnotes. Not endnotes.


64. G.E.R. Lloyd, Greek Science After Aristotle (1973).

An interesting book, talking about the influential ancient philosophers, doctors and astronomers such as Aristarchos of Samos, Archimedes, Hipparchos, Ptolemy, Galen etc; what they thought about the world, and how and why they thought as they did.


65. Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (1990).

This book had rather less involvement with the indigenous cultures than I was hoping for, and rather too much sympathy for imperialism. It also rather troubled me by unnecessarily qualifying certain words like "flattery" and "treachery" with the adjective "oriental".

But flaws aside, still an interesting book.

I begin to head home on Thursday. By Friday evening I should be home.

I am looking forward to mine very own bed. And if people want to hear about my adventures in the meanwhile, you guys should say so. Because after I get home and hermitise for a week, I might forget. :)

Thanks, guys. I owe you. I'd answer your comments individually, but I've only got fifteen minutes before I have to be on site, and I probably won't get internet again til Friday.

The cat is dead. Mum told me on Thursday he'd gone too far, hadn't eaten for over a week, hadn't so much as piddled in days. So she arranged to have him sent to his rest yesterday. Poor boy.

I keep finding his white hairs in my stuff, and I miss him dreadfully.

I'm going to be leaving here two Thursdays from now. I will most certainly not miss either the earwigs or the damp.

Don't know how often this will happen. But it is 1740 on a Sunday evening, work has finished, and the computer hut is still open and has power.

Do you know how much I miss you, internets? I miss you *this much*. It is so very, very rural here, and it feels exceedingly isolate. Isolation with cows. And dirt. Being a child of civilisation, I kind of don't like it. But it's an experience.

Those of you who gave me addresses for postcards, however, may find several turning up on your doorsteps, if the postal services actually work. The longer I am away from the internet, the more talkative I'm getting. Soon I will probably start talking to myself.

What else do I miss? Apart from showers and flushing toilets and electric light (yes, I'm a wuss. This roughing it business, well, I just don't know), the thing I miss most in the wide world is climbing. I'm going a wee bit crazy without walls to climb, and I'm sure my muscles and fingerstrength will be entirely atrophied by the time I get back.

In more interesting news, I have made three 'small finds', which are finds which are not potsherd, charcoal, iron nails or bone. One unidentifiable (to me, at least) piece of iron, and two pieces of copper, one a fragment from a fitting, one a folded fragment of something else. I've found lots and lots and lots of bits of pot, some tiny, some half the size of my hand, and some crumbling bits of bone, a cow tooth, charcoal, and a couple of iron nails. The area I'm investigating is supposed to be pre- or early-Roman ditch fill. I am personally dubious, but what do I know?

Anyway. Hopefully I'll get to catch up with my internets some more soon.

Briefly able to use computer on short lunchbreak. Am here, am hot, damp, digging up old stuff, sending postcards by the dozen - the longer I'm away from the internets, the more talkative I'm getting. Tent is cramped and damp. Am staying in Reading on nights surrounding day off because of this.

Is interesting. Exhausting - I've only been running on my day off, and I have no desire whatsoever to write - dirty, smelly, and did I mention hot? Thursday made it all the way to 35 degrees Celsius. But interesting, and apart from the tent issue and the Portaloo thing, on the whole rather fun.

Must go back to work now.