Can you dig it?

Look at these beautiful shoes.

Seriously. Look at them. They’re Doc Martens. I just ordered them on Friday.

I haven’t owned a pair of Docs since college. And they have steel toes, which I have never had in a pair of boots, never having been in a situation where I urgently needed to kick anything hard or worry about protecting my delicate little piggies. So why am I eagerly awaiting their arrival now? Simple: because later this year, I am going to be spending a week on an archaeological dig, a place where one is very likely to drop, trip over, step on, or stumble into something hard and heavy. Steel-toed boots mandatory.

An archaeological dig? you ask. Really?

Yes, really!

If you’ve been reading this blog a while, you’ve probably noticed that I love history — the older, the better. I also know an archaeologist who’s politely let me buttonhole him at parties for years to hear about digging up amazing things. When I last spoke to him, he mentioned a phrase I’d never heard before: “field school.” It turns out that a lot of digs actively welcome volunteers and students to help them with the hard work of pulling history out of holes in the ground. Yes, you pay for the privilege of doing heavy labor for them, but in exchange you get to learn the basics of excavation while learning about the era you’re digging up (and, if you’re a student, earning academic credit). It sounded like a damn fine way to spend a vacation: going somewhere interesting, learning something new, and — let’s face it — having an excuse to buy shoes. So I went looking for a field school that would get me somewhere I’d like to go while staying within my vacation budget. And lo, I found one — in, of all places, northern England. To be precise, in the city of York.

The thing about York is that it’s been continuously inhabited for thousands of years. The British tribes already had a nice little settlement going when the Romans showed up in 71CE and built an army camp there. When the Romans left, the Angles (as in Anglo-Saxons) showed up. Then the Vikings came. And so forth, up to the present day. The city is a layer cake of history, and whenever anyone does any major construction, they’re required to do an archaeological dig first.

Right now there’s an urban renewal project going on in a section of the city called Hungate. It’s a big project — housing, shops, green space, the whole mixed-use bag — which means a big dig. In fact, the Hungate dig is the biggest ever to be held in York, at least according to the Dig Hungate web site. It’s been going on since 2007 and will continue through 2011. And in the summers, volunteers can show up for a week or two at a time and stay in the local university’s housing. That’s what I’ll be doing.

For roughly $425, I get a week of daily seminars and lectures, basic dig training, the occasional guided tour of the dig, and cheap lodging with kitchen privileges. My  other expenses, besides food and sunscreen, will be airfare to and from the UK and a train ticket to and from York, which has no airport of its own. And I have enough frequent flyer miles to cover half my airfare. (More on budget travel at another time.) In short, everything is coming together to make it feasible for me to go back to England (which I love), see part of the country that’s new to me, satisfy both my history jones and my curiosity about archaeology, and maybe even dig up something fascinating.

I have no idea what I might find. I could end up digging among the Vikings or Romans, or I could be exhuming an 18th century slum. Maybe I’ll find a pipe, or dinnerware, or an arrowhead. Or maybe I’ll find a toilet.

Filed under progress, Uncategorized | Comments (7)