I Dig a Hole

We arrived in York, and after ditching our bags, headed for the Jorvik Viking Centre.

            When you walk in to the Centre, you immediately find yourself on a thick glass floor that looks down at an archaeological site that shows the foundations of two Viking houses. Around the room were videos about Viking conquests, and artifacts that had been found on the site below.

            From there, we went on the Disney-like ride, a slow moving car that drove around a model Viking town with life sized figures that spoke in another language (I presume it was some form of Nordic) as our audio headset helpfully translated, as well as giving insightful information on everyday Viking life.

            After this, we went through the rest of the exhibits, which featured several skeletons, one of which had a hologram-like device that not only outlined various health concerns, but then reconstructed a Viking woman from the bones. It was quite impressive.

            For some reason, my parents refused to let me buy the throwing axe in the gift shop, so we wandered around the town, trying to find the church our dig was taking place at. It was a surprisingly hard task, since it transpires York has about 50 churches. Finally, however, we located the Parish Church of All Saints (North Street), and after getting crepes, we went back to the hotel.

            We got to All Saints at the appointed time on the first day of our dig with the other trainees, and after a safety introduction, we went out to the site. We were introduced to Plantie, the site mascot, and were given an overview of This End and That End (fixed halves of the site, no matter where you are). Since the site had been vacant since April, we were all tasked with removing the weeds from the site.

            Next, we were all assigned a zone. My parents and I were given a space to dig in and clean up, and I shortly found a bit of Roman samianware, as well as some green glazed pottery. Our bit of ground turned out to be a levelling deposit, and it was full of brick, tile, bits of pottery, animal bone, cinders, and clay. We dug for a while, sieving out buckets full of dirt to make sure we weren’t tossing anything of import.

            The second day we took a picture of our piece of the site (hereafter our portion of the site will be referred to as Box) and assigned it context number 1358. Box is a context, or a thing in the site. If we found a grave in Box, then the coffin backfill would be a context, and the person within the remnants of the coffin would be a context. The photograph had to be taken exactly so, with the scale and board perfectly straight and in the exact middle of the picture. It took us several tries. We dug and sieved some more before our second session, which was a lesson about pottery from all ages. It was all rather a whirl of green glaze and gritty ware, but after a while I was able to bandy some terms around like I knew the first thing about pottery. In the afternoon, we were washing finds. We and some other trainees stood and sat in the shade of some trees chatting as we scrubbed dirt covered pieces of brick, tile, and pottery.

            On Wednesday, class began at the York Archaeological Trust in the conservation lab. After an introduction about conservation, we were able to see several iron spear tips, and were told that heavily corroded items were cleaned with a tiny sandblaster. We were also able to look at a large sword, which was being examined. Next, we were taken to a back room where preserved wood is looked at. We learned that drying waterlogged wood takes months of soaking in a solution, and that most wood has to be thrown away due to expense of preservation.

            We returned to the church and mapped out Box using a large metal grid. We did this so that Box could be accurately measured and located on the site. Afterwards, we took the elevation levels using something like a tripod and a long pole. We went to lunch at a place called Circles, which had excellent cinnamon toast, and which my parents declared would be a daily stop.

            After the day’s dig, we went to York Minster for evensong. We got seats in the quire again. This time, the choir consisted of girls, with men singing the lower parts. It was quite lovely.

            On Thursday, we began to discover strange things in Box. First, we found bits of metal in four points, and then we started finding weird holes. Our instructors were certain we’d uncovered a grave. At that point, it was time for us to wash finds, so we carefully scraped our area clean so we could photograph it tomorrow.

            After the dig, we were led on an archaeological tour of York. We followed some of the old Roman fortresses and walls, and were told about various places where digs took place. In one building, a dig resulted in the finding of hundreds of rabbit feet. It was quite a whirlwind of information.

            On Friday, we documented the coffin, got a photograph, took elevation levels, and got our drawing finished. That done, we began to excavate our occupant. We felt certain we were almost there, but then were called to our session about stratigraphy. One of our instructors drew level after level of deposits, beginning with the Neolithic era, where we deposited the remains of Henry, whose plow had broken, leading him to get food poisoning and perish of starvation. From there, we continued with layer after layer, laying Mr. Nails to rest in the Bronze Age after he had been hit with flying nails in an industrial accident. We deposited the statue of Giles in a remembrance garden, and told the tale of Giles Olaf Thorson, the shoemaker, and his son, Gilesson Thorsonson, the exotic cheesemaker. That tale told, we went backwards and catalogued the structures we had drawn. It was quite an adventure.

            After lunch, we returned to Box and continued uncovering the mystery inhabitant within. My parents uncovered the skull first, while I worked to locate the legs. I spent about ten minutes painstakingly uncovering a bone before it was discovered that it was not human. After this, my dad found an eggshell, and I found a decorated metal bit of coffin, but no legs. I was beginning to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have been joking about Mr. Nails and the industrial accident, when I managed to uncover the legs.

            Our last activity of the week was small finds, where we got to look at some of the objects discovered. This detailed the importance of washing, since most of the items were thoroughly dirt caked before being cleaned up.

            Next week we will document our friend before covering him or her back up to rest in peace. The first week of the dig was highly eventful, and I can’t wait for next week!