Archaeology!

18th-25th April 2006:

My first week in Sheffield was a bit hard at first as I had to settle into a new routine of working (rather than holidaying) and living with strangers! However it has turned out to be great, and everyone that I work and live with have been so cool and I am feeling much better about my current situation. The house I am living in is within walking distance of work and shopping etc, granted there are plenty of horrendous hills but I attempt the hike each morning and night and have so far not used the public transport! My flat mates are pretty cool although one of them is a bit weird but he is moving out and Dave and I will have the place to ourselves which should be cool, as he is really easygoing and we have lots of laughs and long chats in the evenings. I love my job! Yes, I can say finally that I really do love archaeology! I am learning so much and am having a ball at the same time. We have been carrying out the evaluation stage at an industrial site in the city which means that we have just been clearing away the rubble to get down to a visible occupation level so that we can draw a plan of the site and then begin mitigation and excavation within which we will systematically work our way down to the bottom of the structures we have uncovered so far. Later I will be travelling to different sites that ARCUS or the Uni are working on so I get some varaiation, and I will be going into the lab to do some lab analysis, and also some drawing and surveying. Basically I should be covering all the basics which will give me plenty of hands-on experience. Cool as! So yeah, will update as I get up to more mischief in Sheffield! Luv ya all! Peace out....

8/5/06:

Well so far I have worked at one site in Sheffield for three weeks, and have learnt tonnes! I have basically been involved in everything during the whole process of mitigation, which is pretty much a very rushed form of excavation. We were given various areas to work on after we had reached occupation levels and the whole trench had been photgraphed and a plan drawing carried out. This meant that we had to clean the area down to discover what was underneath, and then another plan was drawn focussing on that area, and photos were taken. After that, a whole lot of paper work was filled out to describe what was seen, and what we thought it could be/mean. I really enjoyed each part of this process, even when it rained and I got freezing, and when it was sunny then we almost got heat-stroke! Now that excavation has been finished and I will be going into the office tomorrow. I assume that I will be carrying out post-excavation work as there is no site work for a week or so. So that is my update on my internship so far. On the travel side of things, I have organised to go up to scotland this weekend! Yay! I have a three day tour of Edinburgh, the Isle of Skye and the scottish highlands. I will be catching the train to Edinburgh on Friday night and starting the tour on saturday morning until monday night, and then catching the train back on tuesday morning. So yeah looking forward to getting out of the city and seeing more of england/scotland!

NB: Shovelbum is an american term for student archaeologists that are still learning the tricks of the trade! This is no reference to the shape of my bum (not that you were thinking that anyway, were you!).

30.05.06

Well as you can see I have been a bit slack about updating my archaeology section in this travel blog, but that does not mean to say that I have been bored! No, I have still been learning tonnes and enjoying myself!! We worked at a site just outside Sheffield in a place called Rotherham (aptly nicknamed the 'armpit' of Sheffield) for about three weeks. Well Rotherham wasn't too bad but there were absolutely no chip shops around for our friday 'chip day' (hot chips)! We excavated about 12 trenches, only one of which had any known archaeology in the form of an old mill site. A few trenches revealed some possible remains of walls and floor surfaces that were interesting enough to warrant some further excavation at a later date (or it could just be that the developer pissed off the county archaeologist who is meant to 'ok' the site for construction after we are done there). We finished at this site last week, and have now moved to a site just down the road which has several Roman ditches from a fort that was once in the area, which is great but its a bit of a jump from industrial to roman archaeology and I would really have liked some medieval in between, but hey I aint gonna complain! So far the ditches aren't much to look at but they contained some great pottery which I had a play with on Friday. So all good over here in Sheffield! The weekend was great too, because we had monday off, and I also went out into the Peak District finally to have a walk around a cool little town called Castleton (yes there is a castle, but no I didn't fork out the £4 to go in!) Check out the pics to see the scenery! Its what I had imagined England to be like and it was great to see that it really existed! Had a bitch of a hike to the top of this mountain called Mam Tor but it was totally worth it for the views! So yeah thats all from me for a bit but keep in touch people! Peace out kiwis!!!

10.06.06

Well what have I been up to the past few weeks... Well the roman site that I have been working on has had a lot of ups and downs. The trench that I was working on had a great ditch that eventually revealed a large piece of pottery, which at that stage of your excavation was our best find. Digging turned out to be the easy bit. The hard part was actually drawing and describing the bloody thing as it turned out to be really complicated. We had many a discussion/argument overwhat it all meant, and there was great relief all round when we finally compromised and finished it! Then we moved onto another trench (see pics) which had previously thought to be mostly modern archaeology, but really there was tonnes and tonnes of roman pottery!! We had to clean the edges of the trench and then began to draw it a few days ago. This was so exciting for me as it was my first roman excavation so each piece of pottery was really neat to see. It has been so stinking hot here. I mean like 27-30 degrees everyday. This was ok cos I was wearing singlets etc and getting a bit of my old tan back, but then the health and safety arseholes came along and said that we have to wear long sleeves, long pants, gloves, goggles etc! So I nearly had heatstroke the other day! Drinking tonnes of water. We only have monday left at the site so we reckon we can tolerate it, but still it really sucks! It ruins such a great site cos we just find it so hard to work. Oh well! I had a walk down to the allotment of one of the ladies I work with and had tea and cake with her and her partner by the river listening to birds etc which was really cool. I missed the fiest england world cup game tho cos I didn't want to go to the pub by myself as Dave was meeting an old friend from Leeds. Oh well there will be plenty more over the next month. It was weird walking down the road during the game though, noone about, eerie silence. One of those tumbleweeds from the movies would have fitted right in! Anyway thats all for me for a bit. Only 2 weeks til Iceland! Really excited to be moving on although I will miss Sheffield. Its like home now. C ya latter alligators!

17.06.06

This week has been great! I finally got a chance to work in the lab doing post-excavation work. We have so far been cleaning finds from about three sites- including our roman site at Templeborough. It has been really cool seeing how the pottery and glass etc come up when they have been cleaned. We had to take extra care with the Samian decorated pottery as the decoration was raised and could easily be scrubbed off with the glazing. Its also been a neat change to have a more relaxed work environment as we have just been working by ourselves and taking our time, talking and listening to the radio etc. We have also been cataloguing the finds which involves counting the amount of pieces of pottery from each context, weighing them, describing them and then bagging them so that they can be sent to a specialist to be properly analysed. There was also several medieval human skeletons in the lab which a student was working on cataloguing for ARCUS which I had a chance to watch and discuss with her. So all in all a great week! I am also going to go and have a chat with my boss as Elliott (some of you may remember him from last year) is planning on coming over here just after I leave and I thought that I may be able to help him get involved in an internship like mine with ARCUS as I have gained so much from it and it would be pity not to share that with someone else if I can. I can probably even get him a room in the house here too! So yeah just paying it forward I guess! Anyway people keep safe back in NZ, Im off to Iceland soon so will try and update before I go but don't know how much access I will have to internet etc for a bit after that but will do my best. C ya peeps.