28th August 2006, 12:21 PM
I find that there's a big distinction between digging stuff up and writing stuff up. I left college still thinking that anything after the Romans arrived was 'modern rubbish' but rich, complex Roman urban or military sites were a joy to excavate. As HB intimated, there's also a real buzz from connecting the physical remains to documentary sources. In 1996 I excavated a guy called John Hawkes who died exactly 300 years earlier. The site director managed to find out quite a bit about him. On an emotional level, that changed the way I look at the archaeological record forever.
On the other hand, excavating prehistoric sites can be just every so slightly boring: hardly any finds, most of which look like lumps of mud, and an endless sequence of pits and big ditches. However, once you have a big plan and some environmental evidence and spatial distribution of the finds it becomes ten times more engaging.
Part of this comes down to the two part nature of archaeological discovery. First you have 'I think I know what happened', Then you did or research more and you get the second buzzy feeling: 'I knew that this was what happened'. This applies to everything from digging an intersection to finding Troy.
On the other hand, excavating prehistoric sites can be just every so slightly boring: hardly any finds, most of which look like lumps of mud, and an endless sequence of pits and big ditches. However, once you have a big plan and some environmental evidence and spatial distribution of the finds it becomes ten times more engaging.
Part of this comes down to the two part nature of archaeological discovery. First you have 'I think I know what happened', Then you did or research more and you get the second buzzy feeling: 'I knew that this was what happened'. This applies to everything from digging an intersection to finding Troy.