Happy Easter

All small children are archaeologists

- or are all archaeologists children?

Either way there are several striking similarities in the behaviour of the two.


Just watch a small child at play outdoors:

• Browsing the ground, picking up scraps


• testing the objects picked up by putting them into mouth - regardless of them being covered in dirt or sand
  
• Love DIGGING


• Dressed in an all-weather proof outfit where practicality overrules aesthetics


• Leaving traces of mudd in the car, house, supermarket or whereever he/she goes

Now watch the (field-)arcaheologist at work:

• Browsing the ground, picking up scraps


• testing the objects picked up by putting them into mouth - regardless of them being covered in dirt or sand


• Love DIGGING


• Dressed in an all-weather proof outfit where practicality overrules aesthetics


• Leaving traces of mudd in the car, house, supermarket or whereever he/she goes

Conclusion: Perhaps archaeololgists are simply the segment of the population that never grew out of it...

Bad archaeologist with a love for micro stratigraphy

Sunday afternoon.
Just went to the office.
Still have access to it although my time is up and I am not employed by the University any longer.
At least not for the moment.
Soon I'll be hired as an external lecturer which means that I'll work the blood out of myself and get payed by the hour for creating a course and teaching it.
I'm doing the course together with a geologist.
Interesting how we do have some common theoretical challenges. Such as approaches to stratigraphy. And relative dating.
Plus we both like to get our feet into the mudd and our hands dirty... And we don't mind how we look in wellies and windblown tresses.

In fact we archaeologists take a certain pride in having thick, dried up layers of mudd on our boots and preferably on our clothes too.
To document we are actually working. HARD.
We're growing our very own micro-stratigraphy beneath our boots.

Back to work.
I went to the office because I don't remember the more narrow (but relative!) dating of the fibula Amgren 103. Am I a terrible archaeologist because I don't remember that by heart?

IF only I had my notebook in which I described all the finds from the grave in question.
But apparently it can't be found at home or here at the office.
Which means I now have to look it up because I am a terrible archaeologist not remembering this by heart. But hello, I am now admitting it. Even in public (if this blog can be considered public. How many readers does it take to classify something as public? Don't know if I have other readers than myself @ this blog).
Usually we archaeologist cover up the gaps in our expertise, that some times threaten to merge to the surface. So this is outstanding y'all. (or me-all...).

Anyhow, the notebook gone, I'm going to look it up and get it fixed. Never again will I ever forget the dating of silver fibulae of type Almgren 103.

If you, dear reader, are not an archaeologist, this will make no sense or meaning to you, it will be completely irrelevant. Perhaps I should try that approach too. But then I would not be an archaeologist now, would I?

So for now I'm going back to work. It will pay off in the end. Only not financially.
But surely, there are other values in life than what money can buy. The question is if they're overrated?
See ya' later.