Your 1st Dig or Archaeological Experiance.

Nebit

Hey Everyone!
I don't think we have a thread like this.

So i thought it might be interesting to ask people where they did their first excavation or what their first experience with archaeology was.

Mine was this year (2009) i was on a dig in Gledalough with UCD, we were excavating two charcoal-making platforms on a VERY STEEP valley side (i fell over so many times ) The 1st trench we dug, was previously excavated by Healy and we were tasked with finding his trench, and charcoal lower down, Trench 2 was never excavated before but when we started excavations the trench was full of rocks that we had a job recording and moving. we later found a charcoal layer proving that this was indeed a charcoal-making platform. The large amount of rocks we concluded was the remains of a wall that had callapsed.

we also carried out Geophysic and Resativity surveys which was fun.
But the best bit for me was the environmetal coreing!!! :cool: people get paid to get down and dirty. exhausting though. And im now teased by my peers for the large amounts of mud that i was covered in :pac:

what about yourselves??

Doozie

Good grief, sounds like you had a great first experience. I had a bit of a wake up call on my first dig. I volunteered with a Dublin company after I got my degree (recieved without any work experience I might add :eek:) and it was out in Balrothery near Balbriggan way back in 1999. Now I'm not a morning person and I remember the horror of having to get up at six to be on site for 8am coming into winter, getting a bus ride then a car ride from the airport and always feeling car sick on the way...moan moan
but the team I met were great and I got to excavate a fabulous kiln which I must have spent weeks on. It was brilliant too that I got paid two weeks into my experience when someone left and got to know some lovely people I bumped into years later digging elsewhere.

boneless

My first introduction to archaeology was in 1979. We had an archaeological club in school which was set up by one of the teachers. We used to visit sites all over the eastern side of the island. Although I did not make it to college until I was in my late 30's to actually study archaeology I had a major interest in the subject because of that particular teacher.

And the joy of it all is that he was also one of my lecturers in UCD!!

Nebit

boneless wrote: »

And the joy of it all is that he was also one of my lecturers in UCD!!

what was his name?? :eek:

boneless

Nebit wrote: »

what was his name?? :eek:

Read all about in "Trowel", €5.00 from School of Archaeology, UCD !!

Doozie

Thats weird...if you guys dont mind me saying...there's very few archaeologists on the archaeology forum so it seems.

boneless

That's because there are few archaeology jobs out there! I worked on a number of commercial digs in the past though.

trowelled

My first experience in archaeological excavation was with UCD when we did the fieldschool in Templeteenaun in Wicklow. I then went on to volunteer for a week, when I finished the MA, on an excavation conducted by UCD on a section of St Kevins pathway in the Wicklow mountains. This gave me a good insight into what was to come.

The first excavation that I was employed to work on was in Waterford. It was a horizontal watermill. It was a fantastic site with so much perfectly preserved wood. Unfortunately I had a nasty accident off site the second week of the dig so didn't really get a chance to excavate the mill. I was confined to the side of the site bagging and recording the wood.

Marchandire

lol, I think I worked on that dig. It was with ACS near Killoteran in Co. Waterford if I'm right? Not my first but certainly one of the better sites I've dug.

Superb timber preservation but the company didn't provide any hessian until well into the excavation and a lot of the wood was exposed to the sun. Site was flooded out in the end, about ten feet of water and the single pump we had was under it

I heard it was finished a good while later but I was digging in England at the time The second article on the 'news' tab of the ACS website is a PDF of the site presentation, well worth a look: http://www.acsltd.ie/

trowelled

Yep that's the one. I worked on it back in 2006. We had to abandon it sooner than expected due to flooding. The water that was being pumped out ended up seeping back in. My friend worked on it again the folllowing summer.

gravensteen

Mine was the UCD training dig too, though I would bearly class it as my first digging experience. It was too brief (only a week back in 2006). My first commercial experience though was a year later in Kildare, on a wetland site. It was freezing and exhausting. So brilliantly archaeologically authentic as far as I'm concerned.

Nebit

gravensteen wrote: »

Mine was the UCD training dig too, though I would bearly class it as my first digging experience. It was too brief (only a week back in 2006). My first commercial experience though was a year later in Kildare, on a wetland site. It was freezing and exhausting. So brilliantly archaeologically authentic as far as I'm concerned.

ya ours was only a week 2