In
the old old old Dirt
Sean
Winter
This
time last year, I was an archaeology honours student at the
University of Western Australia, and was also working as the
Coordinator of Volunteer and Work Experience Programs at Scitech,
Western Australia’s science centre.
Well, I graduated in July last year (with first class honours,
something which I am irrationally proud of) and began my career
as an archaeologist.
Now I’m working in commercial archaeology in Glasgow, Scotland.
I currently do three main things in my job; assessing possible
archaeological sites, excavating those that need to be excavated,
and doing post-excavation analysis. I’m starting at the bottom,
learning the ropes and working my way up.
Often the work is hard and being at the bottom of a hole in
the driving Scottish rain sometimes makes me wonder why I
choose to do this for a living. But the results can be worth
it. April 12th was a good example of this.
I have just started working on a Roman excavation. We are
digging a temporary Roman military camp near Cumbernauld in
Scotland, which sounds interesting, but really consists of
digging out a 120m long defensive ditch by hand. On average,
the ditch is three metres wide, and one and a half metres
deep. That is a lot of dirt to remove using a trowel!
One of my goals when I came to the UK was to work on a Roman
excavation, but it has been a bit of a rude shock. On April
12th, I was working to dig out the ankle-breaker at the bottom
of the ditch, a thin slot designed to snap the ankle of anyone
whose foot went into it. We are particularly interested in
this soil, as it is the oldest in the ditch and gravity says
it is where we will find anything that may have been left
behind.
I was digging with my trowel and uncovered a piece of wood
about 30cm in length. It is rare for organic materials to
survive in soil, particularly for over 1500 years; so we were
quite excited. Even if it was just a natural bit of wood that
had fallen into the ditch, we could use it to date the ditch
by dendrochronology (counting tree rings) or carbon-14 dating
methods.
But as I uncovered it, we realised it had been shaped by hand,
had a mortice hole (rectangular) to connect to a tenon joint
in the centre of it and was clearly a human-made artefact.
And it was in almost perfect condition.
We’re still not sure what it is, or if it relates to the Roman
occupation of the ditch area, but we know it is old. Geology
and archaeology tell us that the ditch would have started
to fill as soon as it stopped being used, so quickly that
the ankle breaker may have been filled in weeks, and that
is where we found the artefact.
We await the data that will come from the analysis of the
artefact and give us a better idea about what, and how old
it is. Some of my colleagues are sure it is Roman, but I wouldn’t
be surprised if it relates to the local Pictish tribes the
Romans were fighting.
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