Dirty Diggers

Tales from the Archaeological Trenches

Paul Bahn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315430430
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Tired of the airbrushed images of archaeologists in TV documentaries? Want the dirt on what REALLY happens on a dig? Paul Bahn has collected dozens of fun tales from the trenches to illuminate what actually occurs when archaeologists go into the field. He reveals startling episodes with dangerous situations, other dangerous archaeologists (sometimes unclothed), dangerous animals large and small, and cans of beer large and small. The stories that don't appear in the official reports have made their way into this small, humorous volume. Includes cartoons by noted illustrator Bill Tidy.

FOOD AND GROG AND AFTER-EFFECTS …

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

One of the most important aspects of any archaeological project is the food, and field archaeologists have some amusing stories about it.

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On one of Roger Mercer’s excavations, for example, one digger would get up at 6 am and collect mushrooms from a nearby field. These were then sliced and fried, and eaten on toast as part of a delicious breakfast. This became the custom on the dig until, one morning, the digger returned and announced gloomily that there were no mushrooms. So Roger drove to the village shop to buy some. Alas, no luck—the shopkeeper told him, “Sorry, but it’s really odd, our field has produced no mushrooms lately.”

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Jesús Altuna recalls that “in 1964 Jose Miguel de Baran-diarán and I were excavating the cave of Aitzbitarte IV, in the Spanish Basque country. We were staying in a farmhouse. Ba-randiarán’s only dinner was a glass of milk with an egg yolk. One night, for dinner, I was served a rabbit stew. As I was eating it, I saw that among the bones in it some were of rabbit, but others were of cat. I said to Barandiarán “Look, Don José Miguel, this is a cat humerus. There are also some rabbit bones, like this femur and this tibia, but others are cat.” Shortly afterwards, a cat radius also emerged. Barandiarán said “we need to tell the ‘etxekoandre’ (the lady of the house) who served us.” I replied “I don’t dare. When all’s said and done, the stew is very tasty.” “No, no,” said Barandiarán, “eat it if you want, but they cannot deceive us like this.” I called the lady, and said “Listen, there is rabbit here, but there’s also cat.” At first the lady denied it, but Barandiarán insisted strongly. As she saw us arranging the excavated material every night, among which there were many bones, she realised that she couldn’t continue lying and told us “Yes, this morning some mountaineers passed by, and they wanted to eat something, and I gave them this stew. As there wasn’t enough left, we killed the cat and put it in.” I said “Don’t worry, it was very tasty.” And I finished my plate. It was the poor lady’s bad luck that she had put cat with rabbit and given the stew to an archaeozoologist!”

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Dan Potts reports that “in 1977 when I was surveying in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and we were living in tents, we had a Somali cook. My birthday came around and the best my teammates could do in lieu of a birthday cake was to get me a small pastry, a bit like a Danish, with some icing on top. They gave it to our cook with instructions to warm it in the cooker we had that was run off of a generator. He put the candle in it before warming it in the oven and proudly came to our dining tent where he presented it on a platter. Needless to say the wax candle had completely melted in a nice little mound/pool on top of the pastry. The look on his face when he was told he should have put the candle in after warming the pastry was pretty funny.”

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Jon Driver “ran a field project many years ago that was on a tight budget, and the students doing the digging were getting tired of the meagre rations and repetitive meals. One Sunday morning they decided to make Eggs Benedict (thereby using up the eggs that were supposed to last for the next week). They were under the mistaken impression that Eggs Benedict were made with the liqueur Benedictine. They didn’t have Benedictine, but they did have a bottle of scotch, so they used that in the hollandaise sauce—a culinary experiment that was never repeated!”

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The early expeditions of British archaeologist Eric Higgs were renowned for their meagre budgets and, hence, lack of food. He once spoke of foraging in British Army dumps for bully beef tins to put finds in, and also of buying the meat of dead camels—which even the locals wouldn’t buy—to stretch the budget. During one excavation in Israel, which took place near a highly secret military location, there were guards patrolling on horseback at night through the diggers’ camping area. One horse broke its leg between some rocks, and the military guard was distraught, but one of Higgs’ diggers then shot the horse, and some of it was served up at meals. That night, every hyena in Israel seemed to be howling, and chomping on the bones, within a couple of hundred metres of the camp!

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Agatha Christie told of one unfortunate incident at Max Mallowan’s dig at Chagar in Syria: “Six Camembert cheeses had been bought by Max in Alep under the impression that you can treat a Camembert cheese like a Dutch cheese and store it away until wanted. One had been eaten before my arrival, and the Colonel, coming across the other five in his tidying round, had stacked them neatly at the back of a cupboard in the living-room. There they were rapidly overlaid by drawing-paper, typewriting-paper, cigarettes, Turkish delight, etc., and languished in darkness—unremembered. unseen, but not, let it be said, unsmelt. A fortnight later we are all sniffing and hazarding guesses.

“‘If I didn’t know that we’d got no drains—’ says Max.

“‘And the nearest gas-pipe must be about two hundred miles away—’

“‘So I suppose it must be a dead mouse.’

“‘A dead rat at least.’

“Life indoors becoming unendurable, a determined search is made for the hypothetical disintegrating rat. Then, and only then, is the discovery made of a gluey odorous mass which has once been five Camembert cheeses, and which, passing through the coulant stage, are now coulant to the nth degree. […] The horrible remains are entrusted […] for solemn burial at a spot remote from the house” (Christie Mallowan 1946: 124).

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When doing fieldwork abroad, it is a good idea to eat a hearty breakfast before leaving the dig house, because there is a strong chance that you will be accompanied on your walk to the site by ferocious dogs, ostensibly there to guard flocks of sheep, who can only be pacified with offerings of packed lunches—but they are by no means the only threat to your lunch in some parts of the world!

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In the late 1970s a team of archaeologists from the National Museum of the Philippines were asked to map a new cave site near the Tabon cave in Palawan. They set out with packed lunches from their base in the town of Alphonso Trece, rowed an outrigger boat, and climbed steep slopes before reaching the cave. They left their bags just under the cave’s drip-line and started working. When they were further inside the cave they heard unusual sounds by the entrance. A troop of monkeys had descended from the trees and cliff walls and raided their bags. They started opening the packed lunches, which made the team members rush towards the troop. The monkeys scattered far and wide, taking the lunches with them. Needless to say, the team went hungry—and a collective call for revenge dominated their minds. The following morning they prepared for their return to the cave, but this time they brought along a bunch of bananas. In each one, they carefully inserted a red hot chilli pepper. They brought all their stuff inside the cave and left the bananas at the entrance and waited for the monkeys’ return. With pocket transits at hand, and using the mirror to look behind them, they finally heard and saw the monkeys come back. Everyone was excited with the anticipation of seeing the monkeys suffer eating the bananas with the embedded chilies. It did not happen. The monkeys were happily consuming the bundle of bananas with great gusto. The team members were baffled, and rushed to the entrance hoping to grab at least one member of the troop, but they were not fast enough for the monkeys. On the floor of the cave entrance they saw a scatter of banana peels, and in the middle of the rubbish were the uneaten red chili peppers, neatly arranged in a line.

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Finally, a single drumhead cabbage featured in a strange but formative event in the career of Charles Higham: “In 1957, I spent two happy years at the Institute of Archaeology before going up to Cambridge. While at the Institute, I heard that Nick Thomas was going to spend the summer of 1957 digging at Dane’s Camp, an Iron Age Hill fort in Gloucestershire, so I volunteered, and was accepted. At that time my big brother Richard was doing his National Service with the Grenadier Guards. He is massively built, and as part of his army training, as he described it, he was ‘taught how to kill.’

“The dig was exciting. The team of excavators stayed in a large barn, and two young cooks prepared our food each evening. While the dig went swimmingly, as dusk fell and we returned to the barn, a social darkness fell. Four of our number, just as in The Lord of the Rings, began to dominate everything we did. The leader, a youth rather older than the rest of us, had a sharpened trowel in a holster, and did not hesitate to use it, prodding and poking at us if we didn’t respond to his barked orders. His two henchmen were always at his shoulder to ensure compliance. And the last member of the quartet was a girl. They decided to set out a dividing line in the barn, by having us construct a high wall out of stooks of straw. Their accommodation was concealed from us, and they had plenty of room, whereas we were all crowded together. They obtained a table and chairs, and other niceties to make their life comfortable. We had to take them their dinner, and clear and wash up their plates. A sharp jab awaited slowcoaches.

“This was something I had never experienced, though I had heard stories of bullied pupils in public schools, and goings on in dormitories. However, with no ulterior motive, I sent a letter to brother Richard, suggesting that if he had any spare leave, he should join us. We both loved digging, and I knew that he got on very well with Nick Thomas.

“It was evening and just on dinner time when I saw him motoring up the lane to the barn on his Lambretta scooter. We were readying ourselves to take in and serve dinner to the quartet behind the straw wall. The first course was a hot pumpkin soup, served in a large tureen. I briefed Richard on the situation, warning him to keep a low profile. In went the soup, and out came one of our number who had served it. Richard quickly sized up the situation, and before our stunned gaze, walked straight to the kitchen, picked up a large drumhead cabbage, and lobbed it over the straw wall. A second later there was a resounding crash as the cabbage, by a freak aim, landed in the midst of the hot soup and sent it crashing to the ground, liberally sprinkling the quartet as it went.

“In seconds, out came their leader, tarred with pumpkin soup and feathered with flying straw, his trowel brandished at the ready. It was no contest. Richard was waiting. He brushed the flimsy trowel to one side with a wave of his hand, and it went tinkling across the paving stones of the old barn. Then he picked the youth up by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants, and marched him out to the horse trough. He then dunked him into the cold water several times until he was soaked to the skin before laying him down with an aside ‘you looked as if you needed to be cleaned up.’

“Richard then walked back into the barn, and heaved on the wall of stooks until it came crashing down all over the other three, cowering in their enclave. He then sat down quietly and enjoyed his dinner with us. Peace and democracy were restored.

“About two years later, Richard and I visited Knossos, where my teacher from the Institute, John Evans, was digging. It was towards the end of the day and, with his customary hospitality, he asked if we would like to stay with his small team of assistants at the Villa Ariadne, the mansion built for his residence by Arthur Evans. Used to pitching our tent under the stars, we readily accepted his invitation, and lugged our rucksacks up past the row of tavernas to the Villa. We knocked and waited for a response, and before long the door opened, and there, standing in front of us, was the infamous Dane’s Camp quartet. We have had warmer welcomes in our time.

“Fifty years pass and I find myself giving the Jack Golson lecture at the Australian National University. There is a reception afterwards, many old friends, much merriment and fun. Across the room I notice a lady archaeologist of great distinction and gravitas. The face is familiar, the years shed their wrinkles and I recognize her. I walk up beside her and whisper two words: ‘drumhead cabbage’? No further reminder was necessary.”

THE DEMON DRINK

There are countless stories about archaeologists an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Fieldwork Fun
• Excavation Encounters
• Dig Dialogues
• Food and grog and after-effects…
• Archaeology after hours
• Back at the Office