If you know of a better 'ole... then go to it pt1

In lieu of anything really funny or exciting happening on site (unless you call Robot the Bruce's cruel and unusual punishments funny or exciting, like making me trowel natural bedrock for three days solid...) I was thinking about all the places I'd worked on over the years. I've already done three posts previously that was similar with some moderate success. This one will be longer as I have worked on more sites that I have lived in houses, but as before I will break it down into parts so you at the back don't get too bored. I'm going to give a brief overview of the sites and the archaeology therein, but don't worry there should be a few funny stories about some of the personalities that worked on these sites.

I was going to start right at the very beginning but I couldn't find the location of the site at Thundercliffe Grange, where I worked for one day as a fifteen year old lad. I had a trowel and I found some 19th century pottery so it counts as archaeology in my book... I also did a bit of work on Stanton Moor and Beauchief Abbey during my GCSE Archaeology night class years, but again memory escapes me as to which field work we planned and which bit of the grounds we ran a geophysical survey over, respectively... So I'll have to start with my University excavations:


Ingleby, Derbyshire. This is Heath Wood where we excavated two Viking Cremation mounds and two Landrover wheel ruts. This was my very first excavation proper, it was Summer 1999, I was an enthusiastic young pup. An eager digger, trowel at the ready, searching for the past. Boy, how times have changed... It was on this site that I first made contact with the Evil Nazi Dr John Clay, I think it was the first human contact he'd ever had, as he had been hatched from an egg in a laboratory and kept in a cage for the better part of his life until this point. We also had on the team, the extremely weird Stuart Wilson. He had been told by his dentist that sugar was actually good for his teeth, that the crystals in the sugar filled in the gaps in his teeth. When there was a run to the local shop Stuart would request a 2kilo bag of sugar. He ate it straight out of the bag with a spoon...

The following Easter found me in Abingdon, back at school, well the back yard of Abingdon School. As one of Britain's premier boarding schools my working class roots felt a little out of sorts there. And that was even during half term where the pupils had gone home to Mater and Pater and the 500 acres they owned just outside of Epsom. I was there to learn how to use the floatation sieves, in preparation of working at Castell Henlys, more of which later... I remember very little about this excavation, I'm sorry, but here it is...


A year later I went back to Ingleby and then over to Japan for three weeks work at Toyama University's site up in the Aomori prefecture in Northern Japan. Now I can't for the life of me find a picture of the site as it was under a tree canopy and there are lot of tree canopies in the Aomori Prefecture, so instead I've found the community hall where we all stayed in the tiny village of Siura:


Rob and I were housed in this community centre, whilst Pins, Stan and Wendy were all housed with the other girls in the Cat Killer Cell. One of the first nights we were there Rob and I were drinking together whilst waiting for the girls to come over. We were saying 'Chin Chin' before each drink, Withnail and I style, and noticed some of the Japanese Students had a taken an amused interest in what we were doing... We saluted them with 'Chin Chin' rather loudly several times and they seemed to take great delight in this. We found out a couple of days later we'd been shouting 'Cock' at the top of our voices... Here are some more Japanese words that we learned in our time there...

Curimundi = Arrested
Saru ga Shinda = the monkey is dead
Unabe = Lesbian
Chikusho = Shit
Uchujin = Spaceman
Dame Da Korya = Aye Caramba

As you can tell it was a very cultural visit.

What was less of a cultural visit was six weeks spent in South Wales at Castell Henlys, where I was in charge of the afore mentioned Flotation device... I spent the first couple of weeks up to my elbows in freezing water. After a while I realised I could get the students to do the shit work and spent the remaining time laid down sorting through the floated samples. This in turn led onto what became known as 'Lazy Bastarditis' or Housemaids knee on my elbow. My elbow swelled up to three times the size of my head and I was packed off back to York, much to my own relief, mainly at getting out of Wales.


The main site is to the right of the red circled area, but it was under the circle where the floatation tank was set up, so that is where I spent six weeks of my life one summer. This was a student excavation so we had a fair run of lunatics. One of whom, Sam, was a caught on the edge of a 6ft sheer drop mattocking the ground away from under him. I had him for a day and sent him off for a 'long stand', he didn't come back for an hour or so. I believe is still working in archaeology, for Oxford North at last count. Jesus if they'll take him they'll take anyone...

OK, that wraps up part one, the next part will deal with some of the sites in Ireland that I worked on, and if you think I'd already met a few lunatics then these lads were nothing on the madness that awaited in the Green Isle...