Sunday, 6 July 2014

Silchester 2011







I became a town-lifer in the summer of 2011. Aged 27 I had just finished my first year at the University of Bristol studying Archaeology as a mature student. The whole idea of going away to a field for two weeks, knowing no-one and having no previous practical knowledge of excavation was beyond terrifying for me, and after an epic journey involving a very overladen bicycle, several (delayed) trains and a very kindly dog walker I arrived on site, exhausted, scared, slightly tearful and wondering what I’d let myself in for. I didn’t feel that way for very long as I was helped to put up my tent and shown to meet the rest of my group at ‘family dinner’. Over the next two weeks I quickly realised that at Silchester everyone looks out for each other and that’s how it functions and it does become like a big family. Eagle eyes can spot an excavator in need without you even realising it and someone will always try to help if you’ve got a problem, whether you just need a hug or a warm cuppa or a bit more help with something archaeologically.
For me being a town-lifer means so much. It was where my love of field archaeology really started. It has taught me so much about recording and excavation and given me such an incredible opportunity to work among so many like-minded people who have always been supportive and honest and impressively bonkers to ensure that everyone has a great time at Silchester. The 2014 season will be my fourth year and by the end I will have lived within the walls of Calleva Atrebatum for 18 weeks, something that makes me immensely proud!
So I guess I should share a Silchester memory – there are so many it’s hard to choose but I give you a fleeting but perhaps most important one from my first season at Silchester – the moment I knew that I had made the right choice to be an archaeologist.
It starts with a fire, nothing fancy, just a small allocated space on the ground upon which a surface of clay has been deposited to make a hearth.  And in this hearth a fire once burned, giving warmth on the cold days and heat on which food was cooked. How many eyes looked into the flames and watched them dance as stories were passed around? Now the memories of those moments are long forgotten but their possibility remains in the dark red clay that has once more been revealed by the edge of a trowel.  And now it is my trowel that is cutting through that hearth and pulling it apart but rather than be sad that I am destroying it I feel privileged that I am recording its every detail and discovering how it came to be, from the cut made into the gravel beneath it to the layers of clay and flints that formed its structure. I may never know the stories told around this hearth, or hear the voices of those who lived here but I am proud that through archaeology I am once more putting this little hearth back into the story of Calleva. Many archaeologists have their prized find, the thing they wish they could take home with them when digging is done. For me my prize find is a little flint pebble that has been turned ruby red by the clay and heat from that little hearth. That pebble sits on my desk at home and every day it reminds me that sometimes things need to be picked apart to be understood. 

Hannah Raines, Silchester TownLifer

Silchester excavator 2011-2014.

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