Post by Archaix on May 4, 2008 8:47:21 GMT -5
Every day this week save Wednesday I've been doing field archaeology, which means I have to get up at eight tired and hungover, troop down to the designated collection point and spend the whole day performing mind-numbing tasks with about half an hour of lunch time in the middle. It's like a full working day, but I don't get paid.
Day 1: Lectures.
9:30 - 11:45 = The history of field archaeology. How different archaeologists have dug stuff up, complete with pictures of trenches and people scrabbling about in the dust. Half-way through we have to draw up a list of site risks "with the person sat next to you". Here is our list:
1. Falling into a pit of poisonous snakes.
2. Being squashed by a boulder in a narrow corridor.
3. Nazis.
4. Waking the undead.
5. Procuring the wrath of an unmerciful God.
12:30 - 2:45 = Photography in archaeology, from turning it on to taking a photograph in various elementary manners. This went on for well over an hour.
Day 2: Mickelgate Church[/b]
As part of a 15-man Dig Group I help in setting out a grid all along the floor of the church in order to survey it. My smaller group consists of two other guys, one of whom only vaguely understands English because he's half-Polish, half-Nigerian. As a result he misunderstands and then finally ignores my measurement suggestions and goes off on his own with a notebook for the afternoon, leaving me and the other guy to figure out an octagonal column which took over an hour to plot on a graph. We get half an hour of the promised hour's lunch, but the work, while hard, is at least challenging. On the stained glass windows we find inscriptions from the plumbers who replaced the lead frame in the 18th century, who wrote pro-protestant victory messages commemorating the then-recent battle of Culloden.
Figure 1, showing the plans after extensive revision when it turned out the back wall wasn't exactly perpendicular to the baseline, thus ruining all out calculations.
Joe found some beers in a backroom for some reason.
Day 3: A Day of Rest
Day 4: Mickelgate Church 2: Revenge of The Church
Today I fall victim to #5 of archaeological risks: I provoke the wrath of God. As we generally took the piss out of hallowed ground on day 2, Dig Group D is set to study not the floorplan of the church, not the inexplicably well stocked backrooms behind the north-west aisle, nor even the interior elevation using a £5000 theodolite, but the exact positioning and shape of bricks in the wall. To do this, we go outside and get mauled by bugs, and separate into last time's group. The Polgerian, while admittedly doing some heavy work at the start, disappears for about a hour. To this day I have no idea where he ended up.
Figure 2, the bricks as they appeared naturally on the wall.
Figure 3, the treatment Tinypic offers me to make my brick wall photo look more exciting.
Later on in the day I help with sketching certain features in the interior, culminating in the worst illustration of an altar balustrade in altar balustrade illustrating history.
Day 5: Resistivity Surveying
I know how many of us like sticking things into other things (I am 'resident rapist' on the IN forum after all), and so it was only fitting that I should spend the whole of a scorchingly hot day in the middle of a field punching holes into the ground to check the electrical resistance. If it takes three people an hour to survey a 20/20 metre square, how long does it take three people to survey five 20/20 metre squares? That's right, five freaking hours of the most monotonous job ever devised. In consolation we found what might be the wall to a massive Roman villa, and re-surveyed a square that comercial surveyors had done a half-arsed job with which made me feel like a combatant in the fight against archaeological-based capitalism. I repeated this consolingly to myself throughout.
Figure 4, a resistivity metre complete with the grey-white box that -for reasons never fully explained- costs a mere £12000.
Figure 5, RAPE!
Much laughter was exchanged when the lecturer on site called my flatmate a 'penis'.
All this work was very, very tiring and, at times, unforgivably pointless. I have since learned that the wall-measuring technique is now obsolete thanks to new computer software that can do our work in literally a second if it has two sample images to compute with, and that Nazis now very rarely come on site, let alone back into aeroplane propellers. But what I have learned, my friends, is that if you're planning to enter archaeology...don't.
And with that note, I leave you with Figure 6, a photo depicting me releasing stress in the way an archaeologist must.
First published 3rd May 2008 on the CSA Forums
Day 1: Lectures.
9:30 - 11:45 = The history of field archaeology. How different archaeologists have dug stuff up, complete with pictures of trenches and people scrabbling about in the dust. Half-way through we have to draw up a list of site risks "with the person sat next to you". Here is our list:
1. Falling into a pit of poisonous snakes.
2. Being squashed by a boulder in a narrow corridor.
3. Nazis.
4. Waking the undead.
5. Procuring the wrath of an unmerciful God.
12:30 - 2:45 = Photography in archaeology, from turning it on to taking a photograph in various elementary manners. This went on for well over an hour.
Day 2: Mickelgate Church[/b]
As part of a 15-man Dig Group I help in setting out a grid all along the floor of the church in order to survey it. My smaller group consists of two other guys, one of whom only vaguely understands English because he's half-Polish, half-Nigerian. As a result he misunderstands and then finally ignores my measurement suggestions and goes off on his own with a notebook for the afternoon, leaving me and the other guy to figure out an octagonal column which took over an hour to plot on a graph. We get half an hour of the promised hour's lunch, but the work, while hard, is at least challenging. On the stained glass windows we find inscriptions from the plumbers who replaced the lead frame in the 18th century, who wrote pro-protestant victory messages commemorating the then-recent battle of Culloden.
Figure 1, showing the plans after extensive revision when it turned out the back wall wasn't exactly perpendicular to the baseline, thus ruining all out calculations.
Joe found some beers in a backroom for some reason.
Day 3: A Day of Rest
Day 4: Mickelgate Church 2: Revenge of The Church
Today I fall victim to #5 of archaeological risks: I provoke the wrath of God. As we generally took the piss out of hallowed ground on day 2, Dig Group D is set to study not the floorplan of the church, not the inexplicably well stocked backrooms behind the north-west aisle, nor even the interior elevation using a £5000 theodolite, but the exact positioning and shape of bricks in the wall. To do this, we go outside and get mauled by bugs, and separate into last time's group. The Polgerian, while admittedly doing some heavy work at the start, disappears for about a hour. To this day I have no idea where he ended up.
Figure 2, the bricks as they appeared naturally on the wall.
Figure 3, the treatment Tinypic offers me to make my brick wall photo look more exciting.
Later on in the day I help with sketching certain features in the interior, culminating in the worst illustration of an altar balustrade in altar balustrade illustrating history.
Day 5: Resistivity Surveying
I know how many of us like sticking things into other things (I am 'resident rapist' on the IN forum after all), and so it was only fitting that I should spend the whole of a scorchingly hot day in the middle of a field punching holes into the ground to check the electrical resistance. If it takes three people an hour to survey a 20/20 metre square, how long does it take three people to survey five 20/20 metre squares? That's right, five freaking hours of the most monotonous job ever devised. In consolation we found what might be the wall to a massive Roman villa, and re-surveyed a square that comercial surveyors had done a half-arsed job with which made me feel like a combatant in the fight against archaeological-based capitalism. I repeated this consolingly to myself throughout.
Figure 4, a resistivity metre complete with the grey-white box that -for reasons never fully explained- costs a mere £12000.
Figure 5, RAPE!
Much laughter was exchanged when the lecturer on site called my flatmate a 'penis'.
All this work was very, very tiring and, at times, unforgivably pointless. I have since learned that the wall-measuring technique is now obsolete thanks to new computer software that can do our work in literally a second if it has two sample images to compute with, and that Nazis now very rarely come on site, let alone back into aeroplane propellers. But what I have learned, my friends, is that if you're planning to enter archaeology...don't.
And with that note, I leave you with Figure 6, a photo depicting me releasing stress in the way an archaeologist must.
First published 3rd May 2008 on the CSA Forums
