Archaeology Today

I spent twenty years in the field and this is pretty much what it's like.

The Body in the Bog

Iceman

North Brother Island

As an archaeologist, this fascinates me; a former leper colony in the heart of New York City that's been left to decay back into nature.

I'm particularly interested in the way the plaster crumbles off the walls.  It reminds me of some Roman villas I've excavated.

Did humans mate with Neanderthals?

I'd say that the answer is a categorical yes, otherwise there's no logical explanation for Big Wilf propping up the bar down the Dog & Duck.

Occam's razor

A Czech archaeologist claims to have unearthed the tomb of the oldest "gay" caveman. It's only 5000 years old, so it's scarcely a caveman, but we'll blame the "caveman" bit on the press.  Miss Kamila Remisova Vesinova, the archaeologist in charge, bases her claim on her observation that she'd found a male body surrounded with female grave goods.  From this, she concluded that "he" was a bit light in the loafers.

I'm not surprised.  I got into archaeology 35 years ago and a day doesn't go by when I don't see wooly thinking poured out by the bale–especially by those who don't have my training in palaeopatholgy.  I'll pass over the laundry list of alternative explanations (there are many and more likely) for the simplest one.  The report is painfully incomplete.  Given that we're told nothing about the skeleton (if one survived), its condition, or the method of sexing, I'd say that Miss Vesinoca either had an an incomplete skeleton, one in very poor condition, or her methods were less than exhaustive and she got the sex wrong.

"Third gender" (I think they mean "sex") my eye.

World's oldest soup

From the BBC:

Chinese archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is a 2,400-year-old pot of soup, state media report.

Interesting, but no prizes.  The world's oldest soup was discovered by myself in a British Rail buffet at Crewe in 1983.

Lentil, I think.

Veni, vidi, multitool

Proof that in 3rd century AD Rome 12-year old boys were a key market

Digging from the Air

I was pottering about the BBC archives web site when I came across a 1979 gem of a documentary on aerial archaeology. Digging from the Air is such a solid piece of scholarship and so lacking in any sort of pandering or condescension that I would have happily presented it to one of my university classes. It isn't afraid to assume a certain level of education and intelligence in an audience with an attention span greater than that of a hyperactive meerkat. It really feels like a film made by makers and scientists who genuinely want to teach something. I even learned some new things and I'm supposed to be an expert.

It was a delightful nostalgia trip that took me back to the days that saw the start of my own archaeological career. It also showed how great the BBC once was and how far it has fallen from grace.

Today, if they made this programme at all, it would be full of fast cuts, shots of swooping aircraft, flashy CGI graphics, background music that irritates with its relentless pounding, a succession of talking heads who don't actually say anything, and an information content so minimal that one would suspect that the producers were ashamed of being caught teaching anything. If there were a presenter, he would be a very young man in very casual clothes, far too enthusiastic, have the gravitas of a fourteen-year old, have no idea what to do with his hands, and speak with a pronounced regional accent that is 80 percent affectation. Or it would be a very young woman with the put upon air of someone who'd far rather be doing better things, like documentaries on the plight of immigrant Muslim transsexual Hobbits in Notting Hill, and have a pronounced regional accent that is 100 percent affectation and impossible to understand.

Thank God for the BBC archive; a lifeline from a more civilised age.

Long-term recycling

Most archaeological artefacts are just cleaned up, preserved, and tucked away in a warehouse somewhere. If they have any other use, it's generally as a museum exhibit–though I did once commandeer a wrecking bar from an industrial site to help with the excavations.

Now news comes of 2,000-year old Roman lead ingots being used as shielding for a particle detection experiment. It turns out that the experiment is extremely sensitive and even the residual radiation from the lead will throw things off unless the shielding is left to "cool" for a couple of millennia. Enter the cargo of a Roman freighter lost off the coast of Sardinia in the 1st century BC.

Nice of the Romans to have the forethought to lay some by.

Vanishing up one's own...

Times headline:

Seventies campsite in Forest of Dean excavated by Oxford archaeologist

That's campsite as in, well, a campsite. From the '70s.

I used to work for what was then Oxford Unit about the same time as this campsite was in operation and I find it amazing how far archaeology has fallen of the ideals of my time. Okay, those ideals revolved mostly around the pursuits lots of beer and sex (preferably in close proximity), but archaeology did get a look in.

Still, there is a ray of hope here. If we're now excavating thirty-year old campsites, why not thirty-year old excavations? I could come out of retirement and start a whole new career by digging up all the sites I dug up previously to find traces of my previous diggings. Infinitely reductive archaeology; a whole new field.

Bronze age butter

A 3000-year old cask of butter is found in Ireland. Archaeologists are now combing the countryside for some 3000-year old scones.

Try the dining room of the Randolph Hotel, Oxford. I'm sure I saw some last time I was there.

Archaeology Update

White feathered: The archaeologist who refused to dig that year.

One of the results of the credit crunch is that the slump in the construction industry has resulted in layoffs among British archaeologists, who get most of their work these days from watching briefs and rescue excavations in the trail of new buildings. In practical terms that means that the archaeological unemployment rate has skyrocketed from 99.9% to 99.99%.

The truth is, anyone who tries to get a job in archaeology has to have his head examined. Though it's the most fun you can have with your trousers on, it's also the best way to starve or, at best, be trapped indefinitely in a lowly position under those above who regard your every qualification as less of an asset than a threat to their security. That's because during the Great Archaeology Boom of the 1970s, so many would-be Indiana Jones' went into the field that there was an impossible glut for the few paying slots that were available. You could dig if you were willing to roam what was then called The Circuit for sub-subsistence wages, but anything better than that was the stuff of dreams. I recall working for one unit in the '80s where a member of staff died and the day after his obituary hit the papers we were swamped with 3000 applications for his job. If that wasn't enough, there was the famous advice of that time for the best way to get a paying job in archaeology was to wait until 2017 when those with jobs start dying off. And they weren't joking.

That was when things were going good and even then, there were all sorts of closed shops and cliques under what were called the Units that divyed up Great Britain into archaeological fiefdoms never to compete with one another. When the Unit system broke down in the late '80s and the Circuit fell apart it was like the academic version of The Grapes of Wrath as archaeologists scattered far and wide in search of a wage packet.

Small wonder I switched to teaching in the '90s before hanging up my trowel for good in favour of the pen.

I particularly liked the BBC report that included this gem from Mike Pitts, editor of British Archaeology:

No one becomes an archaeologist because they want to get rich.They become archaeologists because they want to be archaeologists.

The first part is true, if hopelessly ungrammatical; the second is absolute bollocks. People become archaeologists because, like Fringe theatre, it's a great excuse to drink huge amounts of beer and get laid–though the latter was often theoretical due to an ongoing lack of female personnel.

But that's another story.

Nighthawkers

Nighthawkers, metal detector enthusiasts who illegally raid archaeological sites, were a major pain during my excavation days that cost me many a night's sleep standing guard after a major find. Some of them were decent blokes with a genuine interest in history who learned to work with us; others were nasty pieces of work who thought that every field in Britain held another Mildenhall Treasue and that they were entitled to it.

All these years later and we're still in the same spot.

Beaker Folk Boffins

As I always suspected, Salisbury Plain was the ancient British Area 51 and Stonehenge a top secret MOD project.

Been there 5000 years; still doesn't fly.

Bonekickers

Bonekickers is a new BBC series that, judging from the previews, is the sort that as a writer I'd run down a side street to avoid. Maybe it has something to do with its self-consciously ethnic and gender balanced cast, painfully cliched "feisty" female lead and publicity stills that uses the dreaded Pose™ that says "We think we're tough and edgy with that indefinable rock-star vibe, though nobody over the age of 15 who doesn't live in their mother's cellar will agree." It looks predictably awful in that hideous trendy way that fills in for creativity these days and I'd probably put it with Torchwood, Robin Hood, and Hex in the Do Not Watch Unless Threatened By Lord Olivier With A Pair Of Dental Pliers file if it weren't for the fact that it is about a load of archaeologists.

This would have been worth a laugh because as a retired archaeologist I've very low expectations about how my field is portrayed in popular culture as a glamorous sort of licensed tomb-robbing and treasure hunting rather than the meticulous, often boring enterprise that it really is. I'm even willing to forgive that the average archaeologist is never shown in truth as a chronically skint bastard forever on the lookout for a decent job. True, according to the reviews, one character is shown as a hard drinker, but the fantasy lies in it being one character.

But I'll let that pass. Let them forever be Indiana Jones chasing after the Holy Grail or the True Cross or the Lost Bus Ticket and more power to them. There are worse ways for a profession to be portrayed (*cough* Casualty *cough*).

Even the BBC is willing to admit this by running an article that points out the... "heightened" nature of the programme. Except they leave one tiny detail out.

You'll notice that I said that it "would have been" worth a laugh. That was before I noticed the buzz on the Internet about the premiere episode that tried to be "contemporary" by having as the villains a load of crazed, white Christian fundamentalists who want to drive all other religions out of Britain and start off their reign of terror by decapitating a peace-loving Muslim.

Marvelous. One moment I'm anticipating a nice MST3K giggle and the next I'm confronted by the BBC using the licence fee to produce something out of an Al Qaeda recruiting video. Suddenly my sense of irony is lacking and I don't feel much like laughing.

George Romero, Call Your Service

Stonehenge was "Domain of the Dead".

Ymeeeennyddaaaau!

Are Nazis Involved?

From the Telegraph:

Archaeologist sparks hunt for Holy Grail

Dr. Henry Jones was unavailable for comment.