Monthly Archives: December 2012

All I want for christmas: pork and rain

Our conservator after trying to consolidate this coffin for six days. I shall never forget the howl of misery with which she blessed its collapse when we tried to remove it.

Like all dutiful (single) archaeologists I have returned home to my parents for Christmas. The end of the season was pretty busy and tiring, although largely because we kept staying up late to get to the end of the dvd of Our Mutual Friend (BBC, 1998). We managed, in the end, to watch three period dramas, dig up nearly a hundred dead people, send only two team members to the doctor, and give one of our conservators a real life nervous breakdown, so a good season all round.

I’m suffering the usual amount of culture shock. It hasn’t stopped raining since the plane broke through the clouds over Manchester airport, my mother took me straight to a carol service in the local medieval church where I felt odd and then fell asleep, and I’m only now starting to remember that toilets have a flush after two months of throwing the paper down a big hole and walking away.

Dreary rain at Manchester

I’ve been at home now for a whole day during which I’ve attempted to eat my body weight in pork. I bought a quantity of large German sausages and a jar of mustard on my way through Frankfurt airport, only to find 6kg of ham at home due to my parents making a happy error in their christmas meat order. I’ve also had to engage in some highly unsuccessful Christmas shopping – my parents made me promise some years ago that I would desist from buying them any more presents in Middle Eastern souqs. Apparently my mother considers there to be a limit to the number of scarves a person can usefully own. I hope she likes tea towels. I have already presented her with my traditional christmas gift of a large bag full of dirty clothes and sand.

My last find of the season; some mashed up painted coffin bits

This may be my last post for a little bit. I was supposed to be digging in Iraq after new year but there’s been a delay over the security arrangements (quelle surprise) leaving me stuck at home for most of January, digging up nothing but a new overdraft in a very very very wet place.

Digging up old stuff in a cold place

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Doodoo and Oy (who are gay lovers), discovered in the clean washing

It’s now gone very cold here and I’m wearing more socks than I can comfortably fit in my shoes. Cold doesn’t last very long in Middle Egypt and the locals seems to act as if surprised and slightly betrayed. Galibiyas are horrible drafty things. This morning I was first into the kitchen for breakfast and found two of the dig house cats sleeping in the clean washing box. The little monsters will do anything to get inside; I keep finding them hiding in the shower, to our mutual surprise. I can hear them scratching at the door from the roof as I write this.

The workmen, in the spirit of Captain Scott, accept their fate and wait for death

The workmen, in the spirit of Captain Scott, accept their fate and wait for the end.

The workmen are just as bad. In the morning they huddle together with a wild look in their eyes as if the world has gone mad and there’s nothing to do but wait for icy death. No one was laughing, however, when it was found that the thermos flasks hadn’t made it to site and we couldn’t make instant noodles. This was especially galling as we’d been down to only chicken flavour for the last week but had been re-supplied that morning with beef. I cried inwardly over my unopened beefy breakfast.

One of our many mysteries was solved today; the disappearance of all the sheets. My Australian colleague J- confessed at dinner that she has finally taken a blanket from the stores as it’s got so cold. We all gaped in astonishment (we all know D- has been under five blankets for the last week and would have taken more if the extra weight wasn’t a risk to life). It seems J- has been unwilling to take her turn in the flea-infestation-blanket-lottery and has instead been adding extra sheets to stave off hypothermia. We find, in fact, that she has fifteen sheets on her bed, not counting the one she sleeps on top of. As A- commented, “sometimes I think I’m a bit strange, and then I go and excavate with people.”

and a further mystery: how did I take this picture of my bony gloves? I now mostly use my laptop for warmth.

The mystery of dinner is also about to be solved with what appears to be potato pizza.

Wind and kids

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On my 29th birthday I got this baby in a box

We’ve had wind now for two days (in the metrological sense you understand) and everyone is very tired, and frustrated and thoroughly exfoliated. I’m digging next to my French colleague who punctuates the working day with “Uh, putain!” about once every twenty minutes as the wind sends another little avalanche of sand into the beautifully clean burial she’s trying to plan. I excavated a child today which is the most irritating sort of burial in these windy times, as there are more bones and they are extra small and easily blown away/misplaced/trodden on etc.

It’s somewhat disconcerting that I have more contact with dead children than live ones. They just aren’t the people I need to deal with on a day to day basis, and I find myself unwelcome around live children and their parents due to my foul mouth and inappropriate anecdotes. A dead-centric view of childhood is something which can be awkward around parents, for example, I pretend to remember how old my friend’s kids are by imagining how long they would be if they laid on the ground: “so Emma must be…” [about the same length as Individual 163 from last season, so] “…four now?”

My worryingly un-solid (and hairy) nephew

I became an aunt very recently and all I can think of when I see my nephew is how very little of him is solid; babies are almost all flesh (and sick and compressed gasses). His pelvis is in six parts instead of two; how weird is that? Baby skeletons do nothing to dispel my association of pregnancy with the dinner table scene from Alien.

Quote of the day: “The wind blew my knee caps away.” – J on the woes of windy grave digging.

Dig chic

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Excavatus! My workmen making sand disappear very very slowly.

For the last two days I’ve had an additional team of workmen on top of my usual lot. This set me off wondering about questions of style. My workmen, who are of the older persuasion, are what you might call steady (as in still and unmoving) and they wear galibiyas. These are the long flowing robes that are seen everywhere in the Egyptian countryside in various shades of dirt. I have a personal preference for galibiyas as they appeal to my grubby orientalist fantasies of which I have to be ashamed. I also own several, made for me by the village tailor, which I use as nightshirts and to pretend I go to Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry.

The other team of workmen do not wear galibiyas but the sort of polyester-based sports-casual look that fails to flatter the young and poor all over the world. I’ve noticed that, unlike the galibiya-wearing community, few of the sports casual crowd dare to smoke. I think the difference generally comes down to attitude and the problem that galibiyas are dreadful things to play football in.

shabby chic: the state of J’s socks

There are also questions of style where archaeologists are concerned. I hold it to be true that no good can come of anyone who shows up in a Bear Grills branded shirt or a cowboy hat. Walking sandals are the lowest form of shoe (bar Crocs (no offence L, I’m sure they’re very comfortable)). In general, I dig in my old clothes until the holes get to the point where I can no longer identify the correct one to get in.

Of course, sometimes the requirements of the service can lead to brave fashion choices. A site I work on in Sudan requires us all to button our shirts to the top and our sleeves to the bottom and tuck in everything which can be tucked to prevent the infiltration of tiny biting flies. This leads to all of us looking a bit like the prisoners in The Shawshank Redemption.

A very eminent egyptologist looking a fool

A very eminent egyptologist looking like a fool

Archaeologists, for the most part, look a terrible mess. I was once walking to the bus stop with a colleague while on a commercial job in the UK. I was waiting while my co-worker tied his shoelace in a shop doorway when a man gave him £5 because he thought we were homeless.

Beasts

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Today’s advent donkey

My Norwegian colleague had an exciting adventure today while endeavouring to go for a quiet piss in the desert. We work in a little valley (or wadi to the purists) and by common consent the men take their lonely walks on the east side while the women have a reed hut on the west side (or a convenient small New Kingdom quarry if one can’t be bothered to walk so far – future excavators here may have a surprise).

My colleague found he had a dog following him, but pressed on, attempting to ignore the dog’s invasive presence and unhelpful manner. Then there were two dogs, then three, and by the time he had reached his usual spot, a considerable number. It seems the local populous had taken exception to a well-groomed Norwegian man coming out every day for three weeks and marking their territory as his own. By the time the Norwegian had undone his flies, he was beginning to think better of his immediate plans and more toward the preservation of his person.

We were all disturbed in our morning work by a tremendous barking and a swiftly moving Norwegian pursued by ten angry dogs.

Some of the dig house pack still live on the roof

We used to have a friendly pack of dogs at the dig house, which were useful for keeping off the less friendly dogs, and for howling at you when you tried to visit the toilets at night. Alas, a doggy plague took them all off a year or so gone.

We are now beset with cats, who scream all night, have violent sex with each other despite all being closely related, and have taken to sleeping in the oven since the weather turned cold. The most revolting and malevolent of them, Oy, has managed to burn all the whiskers off one side of his head this week; I suspect he has taken up smoking which would account for the hacking cough.

Oy's burnt whiskers are clearly visible as he eats a chicken head, on which he is sick shortly after.

Oy’s burnt right whiskers are clearly visible as he eats this chicken head, on which he is sick shortly after.

Quote of the week: “You don’t often get to see a donkey being electrocuted.” (Dig director on seeing a donkey being electrocuted.)

Party pain

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The hop-step-point familiar from Morris dancing

I had a dream last night that I was lying in my grave and someone was trying to bash my head in with the butt of a levelling rod. Then I woke up with the most appalling hangover. We had a bit of a party here at the dig house last night for a special anniversary and some of us got a little carried away. Or in fact, literally carried away.

We had a famous band down from Cairo for some traditional dance music. They used to play for President Mubarak when that was an acceptable thing to do, but now they’re reduced to playing in the middle of nowhere for drunk archaeologists. Vive la revolution. We also invited our workmen, and a fearsome number of antiquities inspectors invited themselves, forcing me to consume most of my alcohol covertly in the office.

And then there was the dancing; oh dear. I have a powerful memory of dancing the Egyptian stick dance using a ranging rod from the equipment store while wearing a cardboard Nefertiti hat. My grace and elegance, honed through careful practice on the floors of low-end clubs and my six month experiment with morris dancing, was of course captured for posterity on the mobile phones of numerous Egyptian men. I’m sure a productive day was spent in the village swapping files and laughing.

Pimp my dervish: dancing at the next level

In consequence, I’ve spent today on a diet of water, ibuprofen and shame. I’ve watched a lot of DVDs and done a fair amount of shaking, punctuated by ignominiously vomiting out of the living room window half way through Howl’s Moving Castle.

I’ve learned several things in the last twenty-four hours: 1) all traditional Egyptian tunes sound exactly the same, 2) foreign women trying to dance is a class of saleable pornography here, 3) gin – there are attainable limits, 4) Egyptian sparkling wine is not fit for human consumption.

I am going back to bed, it seems I may live after all.

A hard rain

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Wet Egypt

I’m writing this post at 7am as we are stuck in the dig house waiting for it to stop raining. If this was what I was after I would have stuck with British archaeology. I estimate we’re about an hour from someone suggesting we play charades.

Archaeology is best done either completely wet or completely dry, but it can go particularly horrible when moisture is introduced to something which has been very dry for the last three thousand years (I am painfully aware that the sheet I put over my new burial yesterday afternoon did not reach the feet). In many ways, the same principle is true at a larger scale in that the entire Middle East becomes unpleasant when it gets wet, as large quantities of rubbish which were relatively benign in their desiccated forms regain their vitality. Often you can smell rain coming in the desert as a faint odour of landfill and wet sheep.

All you need is a cardboard box, some sticky-backed plastic and a sufficient lack of sense. You too can have a Nerfertiti crown.

In the meantime we are employing ourselves usefully in the construction of Nefertiti hats out of cardboard boxes.

An ill wind

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A dear friend after a Turkish dust storm, and Sting in Dune

In general, I like windy days, such as today. It keeps the flies down, keeps you cool, and everyone starts wearing natty scarves and hairdos like Sting in Dune. There’s also the endless fun of watching fellow archaeologists get smacked in the face when their planning board catches the wind as they turn around. Cemetery digging, however, is not so fun in 30 knots; hair and soft tissue go sailing off over the sand and whole babies have been known to simply blow away. Being constantly sat in the same place often leads to your windward ear filling slowly with sand.

A colleague receives the planning board slap

Today did not go to plan in other ways, in that I managed to lose two of my six workmen in one day. First went Hussein. Being only three foot six, Hussein necessarily has the temperament of a Yorkshire terrier in a hot car, and most days can be found seething with rage over one thing or another while neglecting to move buckets of sand. The root source of most of his anger is his optimistic attempt to work a day job and a night job and not to sleep. He’s been largely getting round this by turning up (eventually) to site, announcing he is sick and then proceeding to sleep behind the spoil heap for an hour. Today Hussein, looking completely deranged, finally admitted defeat, announced he was leaving and shuffled off home to catch up on four weeks of sleep.

The second departure was more dramatic. Abdel Malek has been irritating me for weeks with his comedy voice, which to me sounds most like a man talking while straining very very hard to go to the toilet. I was just directing some particularly malevolent thoughts in his direction when he fainted just like they do in the movies. I have no formal first aid training, but calling on my fifteen years of rugby experience I directed that cold water be poured liberally over the affected area. Taking no notice, the remaining workmen proceeded with their own tried and tested method, which involves dragging the casualty out of the trench by one of his arms and both of his legs, then shaking him violently while kneading the back of his head and shouting at him to wake up. This eventually bore fruit and Abdul Malek was assisted from the field towards the doctor.

Meanwhile, I am left to face accusative stares from the dig director about how I treat my workmen, as I have to all appearances forced one of them to resign and worked another to death in the same day.

Life on the excavation pay role is brutal and short

You are what you eat (and sometimes vice versa)

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With dinner just a short hour away, I thought I’d describe some of the culinary delights of the this excavation. Breakfast here has descended into farce since the arrival of extra team members from another site, none of whom know where anything is or how to fine more if something has run out. If one takes an early seat, there is an entertaining procession of tired people arriving, trying to pour themselves coffee from the empty pot and then looking mournfully at everyone else in the hope that someone will make them more. This is good entertainment while I finish my coffee. I generally have bread covered in ‘feta’ cheese, which is in fact about 70% palm oil.

yum

On site I mainly eat the dead people. This is especially true today when I was removing a pair of semi mummified legs and their coffin soaked in body fluids. The disturbance of the coffin sticks causes clouds of thick, dark brown dust to erupt into the air, which is impossible to avoid inhaling even with a scarf round nose and mouth. There then follows a process of intense coughing and swallowing over the next hour or so, today meaning that by the time second breakfast came around I was feeling pretty full.

Egg fantasies

Second breakfast is my favourite meal of the day; it is eaten on site in a small reed hut. The main reason I like it is that it tastes less like Egypt than the other meals, as it consists mostly of crisps and instant noodles, the monosodium glutamate in which makes me feel a bit funny. Of course, there is no escaping the ubiquitous cold, hard-boiled eggs, which tend to make up the bulk of calorie consumption in Middle Eastern archaeology. I used to dream of an end to the endless eggs, but now my imagination has been worn down to the point where I can only dream of hot hard boiled eggs, or hard boiled eggs made into entertaining food models. I can no longer conceive of a world where I don’t have to eat them.

Today’s lunch: Dr Atkin’s doom

Lunch is usually deep-fried or last night’s dinner with added tinned tomatoes. Today’s lunch is an excellent example of a general problem with Middle Eastern excavation cuisine, which is an unhealthy obsession with carbohydrates. This afternoon’s offering was pasta, spaghetti with rice, chips and bread. I spend the afternoon feeling very heavy. In general, however, the food here is pretty good and has vastly improved over the years I’ve been coming. Only 85% of dishes now involve tinned tomatoes and it is almost always possible to tell the dessert course from the soup. There are still some things which just can’t be replaced, and I have a large Sainsbury’s chorizo hidden in the fridge for the dark days ahead. And a great deal of alcohol.

Pork and gin: Egypt travel essentials

I must leave this here as dinner is about to be called (or at least I profoundly hope it is as one of my new colleagues from the other site is playing Celine Dion on the flute and this seems the only (non-violent) way to stop her), I must go and see what delights await this evening…

Finding a good man

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You’re a handsome devil, what’s your name?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young(ish) archaeologist, in possession of nothing but dirty clothes and vast student debt must be in want of a husband – preferably one that owns a car and can be useful when bailiffs call. I was musing on this truth today as I excavated Individual 288; a large, smelly, bearded man; which is generally what I think of as my type.

The tragedy is that in the pursuit of such a dream, the lands of Egyptology are barren wastes where the few flowers which bloom tend to be stunted and peculiar. As a non-Egyptologist, chasing (remunerative) historic science where ever it leads, the case of Egyptology stands distinctly out for its lack of romantic potential. First there is the crushing gender bias, which tends to see around four women for every man on most digs, but there is in addition a tendency for the field to attract unsuitable candidates, with every male Egyptologist I know being either married, homosexual or French.

Napoleon camping in Egypt

Things don’t always seem to have been so bad. Egyptology used to attract sturdy adventurers, men who weren’t afraid to run about Egypt with a trowel, a wide hat and very little intention of writing anything down. But those days are gone, and frankly I blame Napoleon.

John Pendlebury is a good example of what a girl wants out of an Egyptologist. John worked at Tell el-Amarna in the 1930s. He could walk forty miles a day, ride about in the desert shooting animals, and excavate a small town in under a week. Despite losing an eye in a pencil-related incident, the details of which remain obscure, John still managed to become an Olympic-class high jumper and get himself shot as a spy by the Nazis. That’s what I call a man.

Pendlebury made his Egyptian workmen have sports day; egg, spoon and all.

You have my pity, frustrated, single, female Egyptological community (usually just referred to as the Egyptological community, the rest being implied). I suggest some sort of out-reach programme aimed at attractive (bearded) heterosexual eccentrics.

IND.288: nice arse.

Digging up old stuff in hot places

broken things and dead people's rubbish

Monthly Archives: December 2012

All I want for christmas: pork and rain

Digging up old stuff in a cold place

Wind and kids

Dig chic

Beasts

Party pain

A hard rain

An ill wind

You are what you eat (and sometimes vice versa)

Finding a good man