A Time to Blossom

Master and servant

“You don’t mind coming to help gran out on the dig, do you, Nat?” said Craig as he and Nat followed his gran down a small side alley on a street in York, not far from the river and Minster.

“No, Boots, I’m kind of looking forward to it. I’m used to being out in public at events, but this is different and anyway, I like your gran.”

The alleyway opened into a wider space that was clearly a small building site, surrounded on all four sides by older buildings. In the foundations of what was presumably to become a new office building, a series of trenches had been cut into the earth, all accessible along a raised boardwalk.

“This was a car park and, before that, a mews for the shops out on the street we reached it from,” said Craig’s gran. “Now it’s being redeveloped, the Archaeological Trust has a window of opportunity to discover what was here before. We’ve had a few months to put in some excavations and document the site, and just a few more weeks before we have to close it down, cover it over and the builders can continue. What we find will then be inaccessible again for many years.”

“Looks like you have been busy,” said Craig. “Do all those little flags in the trenches mark where you found stuff?”

“Yes, most of it pretty mundane in one sense – bits of broken pottery and metalwork, old rubbish mainly, but collectively it tells us the history of the site. Some of it is mediaeval, some of it Viking, some of it Roman.”

Nat’s eyes widened. “Mundane? You’ve got Vikings and Romans and you call it mundane? Back home, if we dig up anything older than a McDonald’s carton we get excited.”

Craig and his gran laughed.

“Well, I suppose that puts it in context, Nathan. Which is what we’re hoping to do today as part of our ‘Meet the archaeologist’ event over this Easter weekend. “Show people what we’re up to, what is buried beneath their feet, how we discover and document it. Let them see it’s not all ‘Time Team’ or ‘Indiana Jones’. Most of it is simple, painstaking work, carefully digging and sifting through tons of soil, then piecing an amazingly complex historical jigsaw puzzle together.”

“What do you want us to do, Gran?” asked Craig.

“Well, there are lots of different things for you to do, so hopefully you won’t get bored. Quite a few of the archaeological team will be here, supervising undergrad students from the university who have been helping out here, getting their first taste of field work. At some stage you could join them in the trenches, work alongside them, learn what archaeologists do at first hand. However, most of the time, I’d like you to help out guiding visitors around, leading them round the boardwalk – there are information boards at every trench so you won’t have to know everything that is going on.  Then you can take them to the marquees over there where we have some finds on display and experts standing by to answer questions.”

“No problem, Gran. Me and Natty can be tour guides.”

“You’ll need to be more like sheep dogs at times,” his gran said with a twinkle in her eye, “Snapping at people’s ankles, rounding them up, chivvying them along, making sure they don’t jump down into a trench in search of gold…”

“We can do that, can’t we Nat?”

“Plus you’ll probably get roped in to fetch and carry, make tea for the students and experts, generally be used as slave labour. Come over here with me to the site control office – which is the posh name we have for that tent over there -  and I’ll introduce you to a few people.”

Craig and Nat followed his gran into the tent to find it bustling with activity.

“Stand by your beds, the boss is here!” quipped a man carrying a large plastic tray of bones across the room towards a trestle table, weaving around several younger people, presumably undergrad students as he did so.

“Morning Thomas,” said Craig’s gran. “Not only am I here, but I’ve brought a couple more helpers too to add to your team. This is my grandson, Craig, and his friend Nathan, visiting from America. I’m sure you can find them plenty to do.”

“No problem with that, we’ve lots to do before we open to the public in an hour’s time. It’s looking promising too. We’ve already had people at the gate asking when we open. That article in the evening papers and on last night’s television news seems to have really spread the word.”

“Maybe the fact that we’re giving free admission helped too,” said another voice in the background, “Much cheaper to visit us for an hour than to buy an ice cream in the Shambles.”

“Craig, Nathan, I’d like you to meet Professor McKensie, our Site Director. She’s in charge of the day to day running of the excavation. Anne, here is another pair of helpers for you.”

“Excellent. You can start right now. See that tent over there? A couple of our undergrads are putting the finishing touches to a small display inside it. Could you go and lend a hand whilst me and the supervisory team make a few last minute plans? I’ll be over shortly to find out what skills you have and how we can best use your talents later.”

Craig leaned over and gave his gran a quick kiss on the cheek. “Catch up with you later, gran. Come on, Nat, we’ve got work to do.”

“Take this tray of bone fragments over with you too. Give it to one of the girls over there,” added Thomas. “Tell them I’m on my way over to help display them.”

* * *

“It’s a bit dark in here,” said Nat as he and Craig pushed through the flap on the tent opposite and placed the tray on a table inside.

“That flap lifts up, let’s the light in, Nat. It’s an old army style tent, an 18x24, we have them still in cadets. Use them for the cookhouse mainly. Can get lots of people in.”

The tent had a series of trestle tables arranged around its periphery on which a number of undergraduates were setting up displays.

“Anybody expecting some bones?” said Craig loudly. “From somebody called Thomas?”

A girl, perhaps a few years older than Craig, turned round and smiled. “From Doctor Thomas? That’ll be for us. Bring them to this table. Put them in front of these display boards that me and Lizzie are setting up. Yes, just there, that’s fine. Are you the sixth form students we’re getting in today to help out?”

“Err, no I don’t think so,” said Craig indignantly. “I’m here with my gran to help out. I’m Craig.”

“Well, whoever you are, we can give you plenty to do. Who’s your cute friend ? I’m Jackie, this is Lizzie.”

Nathan pushed forward and extended a hand. “Please to meet you, miss. I’m Nathan Bauer. Of the Pennsylvania Bauers.”

“He’s American,” sighed Craig, squeezing back in front of Nat.

Lizzie and Jackie exchanged glances and smiled. “Nice to have you with us. Both of you. Sorry about the confusion. You looked like you might be Sixth Formers. We’re expecting some from the local college. Which university are you from? We weren’t expecting any outside undergrads. First years?”

Nat pushed forward again before Craig could respond. “Allegheny River Military College, I’m over here visiting Craig. He was at our college too last year. His gran asked if we’d help out today. I think she’s the Professor here. That’s right, isn’t it, Craig?” Craig nodded but didn’t manage to get a word out before Nathan continued. “Anything you need, miss, just let us know.”

Jackie smiled at Nathan, then turned and shouted across the tent to a small group of other students. “Josh! When the Sixth Formers arrive, split them up between you four to supervise. Me and Lizzie are taking these two. Now, Craig, can you go and bring me that pile of clothes from the corner there, then go and drag a mannequin over from the store tent. Nathan, you give me and Lizzie a hand with these bones. We’ll show you what to do.”

About ten minutes later Craig re-appeared at the tent flap, pushing his way though with a mannequin held stiffly in his arms. “Give me a hand, Nat. This thing is bloody awkward.”

Nathan looked up and laughed as Craig stumbled towards him. “I’d give the tango a miss, Boots, your partner doesn’t look very agile. Have you seen this? It’s fascinating.”

Nathan pointed to the display boards behind these table he was working at. “The photos are of these exact same bones. Taken through a microscope. Lizzie and Jackie have just been explaining to me, all those scratches and marks on them tell a story. This is a pig bone. See those big regular grooves? Those are caused by a knife, probably a butcher cutting the pig up, just like we did with those rabbits yesterday. Then those smaller marks? More irregular? If you look carefully, you can see they are on top of the knife marks. So, they were done later. That’s right, isn’t it, Jackie?”

“You’ve got it, Nathan.”

“They’re made by teeth,” said Nathan. “Dog teeth. Then there are all these tinier scratches. Rats, Boots. So, we can get the whole history from the timeline. The pig was butchered, then after people had eaten it, the bone was thrown out to the dogs, then last of all, the rats came and gnawed on the remnants. All that just from looking down a microscope at some scratches. Amazing, isn’t it?”

“Viking rats, or Roman rats, Nat?” said Craig with a hint of sarcasm.

“Not so early,” said Lizzie, smirking. “The shape of the cuts tells us that the knife was most likely a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century trade knife, probably from Sheffield. So not really all that old. Plus, we know which stratum of the trench it came from. It’s definitively not old enough to be Viking. This area used to have a few inns and taverns around the right kind of time, and there was a livestock market nearby too. Probably table scraps from just a few hundred years ago, thrown out in the street …”

“Our equivalent of a McDonald’s carton, Nat…” grinned Craig.

“Mundane, as I said earlier, boys, but it all tells a story. Adds to our knowledge of what happened on the site. Another piece in our historical jigsaw.” It was Craig’s gran, who had entered the tent unseen by Craig and Nat as they were learning about the bone display. “I hope you two are behaving for Jackie and Lizzie. They are two of my most promising students this year. Don’t take any nonsense from them, girls. They are here to earn their keep today.”

“Oh, I think we’ve got the measure of them, Professor,” smiled Jackie. “We’re just going to set up the display of clothing.”

“The water table here is quite high, the river being nearby,” said Lizzie to Craig and Nat. “One of the trenches had really good anaerobic conditions in it, right down at the bottom, preserved some scraps of leather and even a few bits of cloth. Pollen samples and stylistic dating suggests they’re about third century Romano-British. Too delicate to put on display in here, and it was only a few small surviving pieces, but we’ve had some replicas made to put on the mannequins alongside photos of the original artefacts.” 

Craig’s gran smiled. “Yes, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I’m not sure it’ll work though, it’s more cluttered in here than I anticipated. So many finds. The Health and Safety people will have kittens if we set up mannequins too. Maybe we’ll just put the photo boards up and lay the replica tunics on a table, forget about the mannequins.”

Craig looked at the clothes he’d brought in earlier, realising what they were now. “So these are Roman tunics, like on that sketch there?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t we wear them? They look like they’d fit me and Nat. When we show people round, we can be Romans.”

There was a moment’s silence as Craig’s gran, Lizzie and Jackie all looked at each other. Craig looked on, impatiently. “Look, I bet they’ll fit.” Craig reached over and picked up a plain, pale oatmeal coloured woollen tunic from the pile of clothes, then pulled his T sheet over his head and threw it to Nat.

“Nice muscles, cutie,” smiled Lizzie, as Craig pulled the tunic over his head. Craig smirked at Lizzie then laughed. “Gran, I’m being sexually harassed here by your students. Tell her how young I am.  She could get into trouble…”

“He boxes,” grinned Nat. “And anyway, I have first call on flirting with him.”

Jackie and Lizzie exchanged glances and laughed again. “Sure boys, anything you say. Play hard to get if you like. Does seem a good idea about the tunics though.”

“It might work,” said Craig’s gran. “Looks to be a reasonable fit. Not that the average slave would have had a tailored suit. It’s definitely good enough. How do you feel about it, Craig? Do you want to wear it? Be a Roman guide?”

“It’s a bit itchy,” said Craig, “But it’s not too bad.”

Nathan took the next piece of clothing from the pile. “This one looks better, smoother cloth.”

“Matches your hair too, gingernut,” said Lizzie. “Try it on.”

Nathan grinned and slipped off his T shirt too, throwing it playfully in Craig’s face.

“He swims,” said Craig cheekily as he saw the girls admiring Nathan’s physique. “Like a brick, admittedly, but he works out hard. And he’s only a year older than me, so hands off him too.”

Jackie smiled. “Roman boys might well have been married at fourteen or fifteen back in the third century. Especially here in the remote provinces, so at seventeen or eighteen you two are prime targets.”

Craig’s gran smiled. “Yes, but Craig and Nathan aren’t actually as old as they appear, or sometimes behave, are you?”

Craig was grinning cheekily again. “See, I tried to tell you I was only ten but you wouldn’t believe me…”

“This tunic doesn’t feel bad at all,” said Nathan, smoothing it out. “Not itchy.”

“That’s because it’s a much higher quality garment. Woven linen, and dyed a nice burgundy rather than being left undyed like the peasant or slave tunic Craig has on. It would have been worn by a Roman official or similar, and Craig is wearing what the British serfs or slaves would have had.”

“Hey, that’s not bloody right, gran,” said Craig. “I should have the Roman tunic and Nathan can be the slave.”

“Now you know how the Britons must have felt when the Romans invaded and took over,” laughed Craig’s gran. “Seems quite fitting too. Nathan could easily be the provincial governor’s son, and you his slave…”

“Don’t even think whatever you’re thinking, Biggus Dickus,” scowled Craig menacingly, “Or I’ll revolt and batter you senseless, Baby Big Cheese…”

* * *

“Move up slave, make space for your master,” grinned Nat as he joined Craig, Lizzie, Jackie and a couple of the other archaeological students at a table placed outside one of the tents for lunch. “Something smells good. What are we having?”

Lizzie smiled at him and reached over to a pile of newspaper wrapped packages at the end of the table, passing one of them to Nathan. Nathan took it and looked puzzled.

“Fish and chips, Nat,” said Craig, looking serious. “A traditional food introduced by the Vikings over a thousand years ago. They used to wrap it in newspaper to keep it dry during long sea voyages on their longships.”

Nat unwrapped the newspaper, then peeled back the inner layer of bright, white, greaseproof paper to reveal a large portion of chips and a crispy, golden, battered fish. “This smells awesome,” he declared. “I’m starving, it’s hard work showing people round my villa. Pass me a knife and fork, somebody?”

One of the other students flicked a small wooden fork across the table to Nat. “Here you go, yank. That’s how to eat fish and chips.”

“Douse it in salt and vinegar too,” said Craig, pushing a bottle of vinegar across the table towards Nat. “Got to have salt and vinegar. It’s the law. Like brown sauce for bacon and sausages.”

“The Danelaw,” commented somebody. “You must have heard of the Danelaw.”

Nat grinned as he broke open the fish and scooped some up on his wooden fork. “I don’t believe half of this,” he grinned, “But it sure tastes good. Do we have a soda to drink?”

“Yes, there are a couple of bottles of lemonade and some paper cups down that end of the table.”

“There are some bottles of cider too,” said Craig, “Pass us one of those each, please, Jackie.”

“Sorry, slave, no can do,” laughed Jackie. “You’re too young, remember?”

Craig popped his head up like a meerkat, scanning round the nearby tables for his gran. “Gran,” he called out as he saw her, “Is it okay for me and Nat to have some cider with our fish and chips?”

“Yes, Craig, only one small bottle each though.”

“Thanks, Gran.”

Half an hour later as lunch was just ending, Craig’s gran came over to the table. “How are things going? I’ve seen Nathan and Craig leading groups of visitors around but haven’t had a chance to speak to anyone yet.”

“They’ve had us in stitches,” said one of the undergrads. “The banter between them as they bring groups over to our trenches has been amazing. Surly slave and pretentious patrician, better than anything from ‘Blackadder’. The visitors love it too.”

“I’ll get back to my orgy now, leave my slave to show you round the smelly bits of history down in the trench,” quoted one of the diggers. “Don’t listen to him if he complains his tunic is made of itchy wool. He’s just got fleas.”

“Come on kids, lets go and find Indiana Jones. See if he’s got some fossilised dinosaur poo we can throw at the Roman,” laughed another.

“Well, it seems you’re entering into the spirit of things and, more importantly, making the visitors enthusiastic. That’s what it’s all about. Now, for the next couple of hours, how do you fancy a change? Ask them nicely and Jackie and Lizzie will let you do some real digging  - under supervision mind – in their trenches. Can’t promise you’ll find any fossil poo though, I don’t think we’ve dug that deep yet.”

* * *

“Have you found anything yet, Boots?” asked Nat as he took a break from his corner of the excavation and wandered over to where Craig was poking at the ground with a cocktail stick and a tiny paintbrush.

“A hole,” replied Craig.

“A hole? Where? I can’t see a hole. You’re just brushing grains of silt about.”

“Exactly,” said Craig. “That’s why we know it’s a hole.”

Nathan looked baffled. “There isn’t a hole there, Craig. Even I can see that. I might fall for that rubbish about Viking newspapers for waterproofing fish and chips, but even I can see there’s no hole there.”

Lizzie, who was sitting on an upturned bucket at the side of Craig, smiled. “It’s definitely a hole, Nathan. Look from over here. What colour is the earth in the trench here?”

“Sort of a muddy brown, generally,” said Nathan.

“And that bit there, that small patch where Craig is poking and brushing?”

“Well, just about the same. Maybe a tiny bit darker.”

“That’s the hole. It’s probably a post hole. Craig is carefully cleaning up the boundary of the two different types of earth. Hundreds, possibly even a thousand or more years ago, there was probably a wooden structure here. A house, or a fence, or a cattle pen, we have no idea yet. A Roman building, made of stone and tiles, often leaves clear remnants, like those small areas of foundation stone over in Trench D. Here we just have shadowy traces, a ghost if you like, of what once was here then rotted away. A timber post would eventually rot and be eaten by bacteria unless it got waterlogged and preserved, but that is rare. Here, it rotted away. But as it rotted, it would be replaced by earth and sand and other detritus blowing into the emptying space. Stuff of a different colour and texture to the surrounding ground. So that’s how we know we’ve found a hole. A ghost of a hole.”

Nathan looked at Lizzie. “Wow!”

“It’s like those bone marks, Nat,” said Craig. “Real archaeology isn’t all like the Temple of Doom and treasure. It’s putting tiny clues together. Gran always says that.”

“What we’d hope to find,” said Lizzie, “Is another hole nearby. Perhaps about six feet away. Then another, in line with those two. The we could start marking out the line of a fence, or the walls of a hut as we begin to find more and more. It could take days and days of course. And we might not find any more at all. This could just be a single post, knocked into the ground for a reason we’ll never be sure about. It’s what makes archaeology so fascinating. Everybody can have a theory, their own interpretation of the evidence, but first, we need the evidence. And most of that is hidden…”

Craig continued painstakingly tidying up the post hole ghost in his trench as Nathan strolled back to his own part of the excavation and began to work with renewed vigour. It was almost an hour later when Craig’s gran came over and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Craig, Lizzie, you might like to come over to Trench G and see what Nathan is doing. We think him and Jackie have found something interesting too. Craig, put that plastic sheet over the hole before you move away from it. We don’t want the breeze undoing all your hard work!”

After covering up the post hole, Craig clambered out of the trench and headed across the site to where a small group of people had gathered where Nathan and Jackie were digging.

“What you found, Nat?” asked Craig, squeezing through to the front.

“Something metal,” grinned Nat as he looked up from where he was laying, face down, on the ground besides Jackie. The two of them were very carefully working away at the ground in front of them with tiny brushes. A small black and white scale printed on a piece of plastic had been placed on the ground before them and a student was filming them with a video camera.

“Bet it’s a bit of old Victorian wire,” said one digger. “My trench is full of the stuff.”

“Looks older to me,” said another. “It’s like a tiny fragment of chased silverware. Tarnished and corroded, but definitely not Victorian.”

“Maybe a ring?”

“Or a brooch?”

“Probably just an old rotting ring pull from a 1970s drinks can.”

Craig’s gran smiled. “See Craig, Nathan, until we get it fully revealed, we really can’t be certain what it is. What we do know though, from the stratigraphy, is that’s it in the pre-Norman, post-Roman layers. So probably Saxon or Viking rather than a Victorian plumber’s waste.”

“It’s definitely got some worked features on it,” said Jackie. “Tiny tooling marks. Carefully wipe that bit with your brush, Nathan. Gently.”

“It’s like a tiny bit of curled up metal. And yes, it’s definitely got some marks on it. Kind of curved.”

“Maybe it’s the trim from a Viking drinking horn,” ventured Craig. “You know, the silver bit round the edges.”

“Unlikely,” cane a comment from Dr Thomas. “Be nice if it were, but that’s rare. People tended to look after their silver.”

“Come on, Craig,” said Lizzie. “Excitement over. Back to our ghost hole, leave Nathan and Jackie to dig up their goblin treasure hoard.”

* * *

It was about three in the afternoon when Nathan came over to Craig’s trench with a smile on his face.

“What did you find, Nathan?” asked Lizzie and Craig simultaneously.

“We still aren’t sure,” said Nathan. “We’ve taken it to the finds tent for examination. Jackie made me dig all round it, then we carefully lifted it out of the ground after it had been photographed a million times. They even scanned it with a laser thingy first.”

“That’s to pinpoint its location for the finds survey,” said Lizzie.

“It’s still partly covered in soil, sticky soil that won’t brush away easily. Your gran says they’ll take it away and X-ray it, then carefully dissolve the soil away. It could take them weeks. But we’ve got some ideas about it.”

Craig raised an eyebrow.

“It could be a tally. A tiny scrap of lead or silver, with a contract of a debt or something written on it, then rolled up,” said Nathan. “That’s one suggestion.”

“So you’ve found a Viking shopping list, or receipt for a packet of fags,” laughed Craig. Lizzie smiled too.

“Obviously,” said Nathan, “It could be something else too. Dr Thomas thinks it might be a coining blank. A thin strip of silver ribbon that coins would have been punched from. Counterfeit ones though.”

“That’d be more interesting,” said Craig. “Viking thieves at work, counterfeiting coins. I like that idea.”

Nathan smiled. “So do I. Anyway, the main reason I’m here is your gran says we’re getting really busy with visitors again, so she’d like us to go back to being sheep dogs and leave Lizzie and Jackie to get on with the archaeology for a while.”

Craig grinned. “Fine by me, I could do with a break from moving sand grains about. You’re going to look odd though, Nat. People expect slaves to be a bit grubby, but how are you going to explain why you’ve got dirt on your posh tunic and scruffy knees?”

Nat smirked. “I did mention earlier to some of the other visitors that I had an orgy to go to…”

* * *