Spoilheap!!

boneless

Any diggers out there with funny stories from digs? Any excavators out there who made "Mistakes" in the field?

To start the ball rolling... a certain lecturer was making students aware of the fragile nature of some of the pottery on a research site and was warning them to trowel lightly until they were better aquainted with the nature of the material culture on the site. As he stood back we heard a distinct "crack" of ceramic breaking... he had trod on a piece of Bristol glaze ware pottery. It would have been the biggest sherd found that season...:D

Even the experts can make mistakes!!

trowelled

Funniest thing that happened to me, and it's not even all that funny, was when I was emptying my wheelbarrow. I proceeded up the barrow board to make it to the top of the heap and was so happy when I reached the summit, the boards were somewhat dodgy. Anyway I tipped the barrow over and as I tipped it my body followed and so I fell onto the spoilheap.

boneless

I have had run-ins with barrow boards too. Especially on wet sites .

Nutlog!!!

I remember my scariest...and then funniest...moment. Moving an ashamedly full barrow along a board on a wet day and near the edge of a 2m deep section. I tripped, fell into the section (which was full of water) and the last thing I remember doing was pushing the barrow away from me as I fell in. Don't want to think what may have happened if the barrow came in with me! :eek:

Anyhow...I'm a hell of a lot more safety conscious now!!!

buffalo

Wasn't there a health and safety officer hit by a tree... on the M3 site somewhere... I may be exaggerating/imagining this - the tales of archaeologists are often told late in the evening in local hostelries.

He survived though, I'm fairly sure. Anyone know the details/enough to tell me to shush?

boneless

buffalo wrote: »

Wasn't there a health and safety officer hit by a tree... on the M3 site somewhere... I may be exaggerating/imagining this - the tales of archaeologists are often told late in the evening in local hostelries.

He survived though, I'm fairly sure. Anyone know the details/enough to tell me to shush?

Didn't hear that one yet but on a city centre site the director was complaining about the practices of the crane driver and banksman to the safety Officer. As they were discussing the problem the crane driver dropped a few tons of gun barrel tubing beside them, nearly breaking their legs.

For once on the site the SO sided with the diggers!!

Aelfric

I nearly lost a nipple to a wheelbarrow accident (good job I'm male otherwise it could have been a whole lot more serious). I was excavating at Kendal Castle in Cumbria, and as the spoilheap was enclosed behind Harris fencing, we had little room to spread out, so it kept getting higher. Anyway, I decided to run down the slope with a full barrow, so that I could propel myself and said barrow up the slope to the top of the heap. Just before hitting the bottom of the ramp, the bar around the wheel hit a rock, and the barrow stopped dead. Needless to say I didn't.

Unfortunately for me, the handles were well worn, and the metal was protruding from them. The open end of the left handle hit me in the chest 1.5cms from my left nipple (I was wearing a thin T-shirt), and I ended up will one heck of a scrape and bruise. Bloody lucky not to break a rib.

Needless to say I don't run with wheelbarrows now. Mind you, being a Site Director, I don't push barrows very often anyway. I also upended a barrow more recently that didn't empty because it was full of slushy mud, so I got pitched headlong over the bars!

I think it's best I stay clear of wheelbarrows altogether!!

Stuart

boneless

^^ Ouch!!! Ah, wheelbarrows... we can't do without them but they do their best to kill us! :P

Nutlog!!!

Aelfric, I think that story about you was relayed to me by one of your former site assistants heh heh!

Just yesterday I got a good half hour off work (I think), due to a run-in between a grid peg (VERY securely held) and my crotch. Again, a wheelbarrow was my undoing....helped along by surface water caused by that lovely summer we had last week. If I ever have kids they'll be...well, special!

Interesting that most of these posts seem to relate to some form of personal injury. Why the fluck am I doing this job?!!!

Aelfric

Be careful out there people. The wheelbarrows...they're out to get us.:eek:

catbear

i lost count of the times i've worked on site where staff were promoted depending on who was shagging who. it made a mockery of the thing.

anyway one time i had a fake artifact that i picked up the med, it was april fools so when the director came around asking what's up, i said "nothing except this thing". when we saw the expression on her face we all felt immediately guilt because she was really taking in by it.
we actually had to persuade her it wasn't real, she really wanted to believe we had found something with med link on that site; pity.

actually some of the stories are just too stupid to tell.
wheel borrow compensation claims will probably outstrip army deafness.

Degsy

I've always meant to ask.Say you have a load of clay pipes and stuff that would be very common but help to date a site.What do you do with finds like that?

Aelfric

Well that really depends. The correct answer is catalogue them and keep them, especially if the clay pipe frags and other bits of post-med pot are the only finds from the site. In reality, the Museum don't want them, because they're nothing special, and they take up precious space.

micf

A friend of my Dad is a lecturer in U.C.D. He told my Dad a story about a student on a research dig who missed a whole lot of pottery and metal stuff while trowelling a monastic or church site. The student just dumped them with his spoil. He (the lecturer) just happened to spot them before the backfilling was done. I believe he was not impressed .

Smartypantsdig

Spotted this thread in the archive

I could really tell some tales from over the years!!

On my first ever dig I managed to almost trowel through a very heavy patch of what I took for compacted peat or something of that nature. The director happened to pass by and bawled me out of the trench! It transpired that what I was hacking was some bronze age pottery ...

Ah well, we have to learn the hard way!!

oflynno

nothing to do with archaeology,but i used used to work with guys driving diggers.i occasionally would bring a plastic skull from halloween with me and throw it into the hole they were digging,and then wave the hands to get them to stop digging,and point at the skull.

i caught a good few lads with it,i got the odd steel toecap up the arse though.

funny thing was when one guy would get caught,he would be quick to nominate the next eejit to wind up

muireann50

Walking through the muddiest site ever when I sank up to my thighs in mud. Stupidly put my hands on the ground to push myself out and my arms got sucked into the mud. I kid you not, very true story, I was completely stuck. Didnt help that there was a digger near by with the driver just laughing while inside his heated cabin. Took a few minutes of wriggling to get myself back out. It was fun cleaning off the waterproofs that night