If you know of a better 'ole... then go to it pt2

Welcome to the second part of my archaeological memories, if you missed part one, find it here. Before I begin, you are cordially invited to leave your own comments and memories of lunatics you have met working in archaeology, c'mon, let's get a database gong here! After working at Castell Henllys for six weeks I only managed to get a job tour guiding for York Archaeological Trust at their St Leonard's Hospice site in the centre of York. Some may remember this site when Time Team dug there expecting Medieval hospital remains. The only Medieval period remains they found was a single column base. The rest had been fucked out by a Second World War Air raid shelter. The fact that the older residents of York repeatedly came along and said 'Oh yes, that's where the air raid shelter was, you'll never find anything there...' didn't stop them from digging. A little local knowledge goes a long way...

'Is it Roman, Tony?'
'No you daft cunt it's an air raid shelter and drop that fucking stupid accent, isn't it strange you don't have it when you're in the pub when filming has finished? And another fucking thing, get that fucking hat cleaned, there's more sweat on it than a whore's mattress.'

I digress... I could find no digging work in the UK. The country was recovering from the foot and mouth crisis and there was scant employment opportunities. Ireland on the other hand, was still running at full tilt with the Celtic Tiger boom and it needed roads and needed them fast. The EU was pouring money into the country like it was going out of fashion. Well, toothless simpletons riding bareback on horses, travelling on dirt roads weren't going to give Ireland the infrastructure it needed to compete with the Robotic Germans was it? In order to build the roads, the developers needed to sort out the archaeology before building could begin. On the back of this EU money several million Irish archaeological companies set up shop and had a piece of the Euro pie. I got work with ADS (Archaeological Development Services ltd), from here on in you will notice there is an awful lot of Acronyms in Archaeology, most have the letter A in them somewhere. The worst, in every possible sense of the word, and I shit you not this is the real name of a company, is ARS. Anyhoo, having applied by email one evening and then getting a reply the first thing the following morning desperately asking when I could start work (I should have noticed something was up at this point. A company with so much turnover of staff must be a good one right? Wrong...) I found myself in the Hostel at Wicklow town awaiting work here:


The Cullenmore bends. You will notice this looks more like a motorway interchange than an archaeological site. That's because it is. Please, do try catch up at the back. As I've explained most of the Irish sites we were working on were ahead of road building schemes, so most of the satellite images show roads now rather than the fields I knew them as. Now this was a baptism of fire and it was only the sheer brilliance of the digging staff (Bennen, Rupert, Angelos, Ger, Jonny, Charlotte, Jo, Pins and Cillian, to name but a few of whom I am still good friends with) that kept me going for the three months I was on this site. What was up with this site? First off, the Director Catherine was the biggest cunt I have ever come across, I have worked for many other people since and not one has come anywhere close to be such a colossal worthless piece of shit of a human being as Catherine. She was a complete control freak, she hated me with a passion, not only was I English, but male and also had an opinion. Secondly, we were not allowed to talk on site, one of the few things that gets you through the day in archaeology is chatting with your co-workers. With this basic human right thrown out of the window we were nothing more than slaves. I broke this rule so much that I was actually sent about 100 meters away to work alone from the rest of the crew.

'Guys! Guys! Where are you! Is it tea break yet? Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?'

Amongst other luminaries of the Irish Archaeological world that populated this site were the brothers Jimmy and Mick, every fortnight on the Thursday payday they would disappear off from work and not return for about four days until their wallets were empty and their skins full. We had Lenny, who would eat only mustard sandwiches. We had the fat Scottish Lisa who would eat only Nutella out of a jar with a spoon. We had that prematurely bald cunt Dan who had his tongue so far up anyone in charge's arse he couldn't talk properly. At the time I didn't realise how easy it was to get other work otherwise I would have got out of there quicker. It took me three months in Hell to call up another company and get work, It was for VJK (Valerie J. Keeley) and the controversial Carrickmines site...


This was the biggest site I've ever worked on, there were about 120 people on site at it's peak. The site was being excavated for no less than two years... The site huts resembled a refugee camp that had become semi permanent and at least one person was camping in the grounds of the excavation.

Soweto or Carrickmines? The difference is there is running water in Soweto...

I can't even begin to scratch the surface of the amount of freaks that were at Carrickmines. It was like one massive Care in the Community program. We had Cedric the Bretonian Bagpipe playing Frenchman, Eoghin the Space Cadet (his mother would make his sandwiches every day, when she went away on holiday she would put them in the freezer for him with the day written on the bag...), Timo the Finnish Sex Pest who went off on European sex jaunts and would text people on site with his successes, often actually during the act, Jim '18' Wheeler, who managed to write up his area of the site from inside the cabins, these are just four that spring to mind. There was a three legged dog called 'Stumpy', there was another one with all four legs intact and to tell them apart this one was called 'Not Stumpy'. As Frisbee and dope were the order for the day at Carrickmines, there's little wonder it took so long to excavate. It truly was as if the circus had come to town. There were mud fights, worm eating contests and moat swimming episodes, all of which invariably ended up in the Magic Carpet pub...

Cath probably only got 20 Euros for swimming the moat, this shows how depserate for money we archaeologists are...

The madness had to come to an end and Carrickmines finally did finish and I had to find another job. I threw my lot in with IAC (Irish Archaeological Consultancy (are you keeping up?)) at Kilkock (no, not a town full of Lesbians):


As you can see on the picture I have marked the entire length of the road as I can't locate the actual field we were in. Most of the landscape was ripped out so the recognisable features have disappeared. So sue me. I do remember we had to walk over several fields to get to site, some of which were full of Rams. Gerry 'Magic-these-gloves-smell-like-balloons' Carty would always stop and admire them. 'That's a fine head o' Rams there' he would say. IAC were always 'saving' money and this site was not exempt from this, the site furniture had to be made by one of the crew out of the surrounding fence posts and whatever else could be scavenged, we archaeologists are nothing if not resourceful... I worked at the Kilkock site from September to December, in the deepest winter. We only had two gas rings to heat ourselves with. The crew would spend the breaks huddled together for warmth, given that we were all covered in filth from the disgusting conditions outside it was like we were fighting at Stalingrad. I tried to find a photo that I have that shows the conditions we worked in, I couldn't find it so the following picture gives some idea of how we were working:

Imagine this with more mud and you have Kilkock...

There weren't so many freaks on the site at Kilkock, there was the Frodo Baggins look-a-like Niall, but beyond Emma eating teabags for a bet one break there wasn't much else. The madness happened off site, like when we were evicted from our house for having a party during which another certifiable nutter, Belgian Paul was caught pissing up against the wall in the kitchen. A day after the eviction I left to go on a holiday in Romania for a few weeks and came back to find the site finishing, so looking around for work I made the fine choice of working for CRDS (Cultural Resource Development Systems, say What!?). We had the honour of working before the car park went in at the high class Golf course on the K Club in Straffan, County Kildare:


Again, identifying the actual location of the site is impossible given that it has all changed since the Winter of 2002/2003. This was a great site, I was working with good people: Aaron, Laura, Denis and Donal, the archaeology was nothing to write home about and we were still in the depth of winter, one morning we were mattocking the frozen ground, we didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I tell you there is nothing like breaking the ice covering your feature before bailing out the freezing water below at 8.00am to make you feel ALIVE! This was also the time Aaron was sleeping on my floor in the Dublin Dungeon. 'I'll only be about two weeks' he promised me. Three months later he was still feeding me Chinese takeaways and walking through my bedroom to take a shit every morning at 6.00am on the dot (the toilet wasn't in my room, you just had to pass through it to get there...). CRDS were at their best during this time. They were small, I knew all the permanent staff and management and they did their best to look after Laura and I, giving us post-ex work when they could have laid us off. I have always maintained CRDS were the best company I ever worked for in Ireland. During this time at CRDS I managed to sly my way onto No Man's Land excavations at Ocean Villas, in France.


I'm afraid this was the best resolution picture I could find of Auchonvillers, so it will have to do. This was the first taste of Battlefield archaeology I got and I had a great time and met many good friends through this project. I still remember the thrill when mattocking a section to straighten it and about one hundred British .303 rifle bullets fell out...

After this short excusion to France, I flew back to Ireland and went back with CRDS, but that will have to wait until part three...