Centuries of Clay

Saturday morning I showed up at Castle Hill Heritage Centre for the next workshop in an ongoing series to train interested people in the community on the techniques of archaeology. I had only the vaguest notion of what to expect. I found myself sitting around a table with 8 other adults listening to a man who has spent 40 years studying pottery and has a fondness for teaching other people what he knows. I like both that generosity of spirit and an opportunity to learn deeply about something.

Part of George Haggerty's commitment to teaching is the premise that you cannot understand the differences in pottery without seeing them, handling them. So he has spread out in front of us lying on their little plastic archaeological find bags a feast of pottery pieces from the 12th through the 17th century from his own collection and from the National Museum. They might look like little plastic baggies with broken bits of pottery to a casual observer. For the eight of us, it was a treasure trove, a guided tour through centuries of pottery and the people who dug it, worked, it, sold it, and used it.

Because I am one of those people who looks into the glass cabinets in museum and yearns to see what is on the other side, to know what the object feels like, to understand how it was used, I was delighted. Scottish white gritty from the 12th century is actually white and gritty. It can look like a bone if you run across it while digging.

If it is fired in part of the kiln that did not get as much heat or oxygen as other parts, it may be greyish. Or part of it may be grey, so that two shards of the same pot may not be the same colour. Red ware, similarly, is not always red. So colour, although a tantalizing clue for identification has to be regarded with caution.

Ironstone is dense and dark. Even a tiny handle has heft in the palm of my hand. A looped back piece of clay fired with a bit of green glaze is the handle for a long lost frying pan. I hold it in my hand and try to imagine what sort of a meal I could make in such a pan. What did they eat 500 years ago? The handle feels too short for a proper fry pan. The glaze makes it sleek, but the smooth grain of the pottery shows where the glaze has not reached it. I think of all the handles I have seen lined up in glass cases and celebrate the fact that I have this one in my hand now.

I handle the feet of a pipkin and the rim of a chafing dish from the 16th century before we break for lunch.

Saturday evening I come back with a friend for the public lecture on 17th and 18th century Scottish pottery. As with so many things, Scots were not thought to make any pottery. It takes a lot of evidence to budge a stereotype.

Sunday is porcelain. We laugh nervously around the table as we handle a cup worth several thousand pounds. It is beautiful to touch. George Haggerty is right. You do understand so much more when you can see something for yourself.

Now our mentor is back down south. He has left us with books and CDs and an enthusiasm for understanding and cherishing what ceramics can tell us.

Looking for Vikings: Week 2

Last night we had the second public lecture in the ongoing series of the Looking for Vikings Project in Caithness. We got an update on what they have found so far and some background on pre-Viking archaeology. As you could well imagine, Caithness has been an active place for several thousands of years. Oddly, archaeologists were very active up here in the 1860-1910 time frame and then just sort of forgot about Caithness.

Caithness has more than 200 brochs--iron age towers made of stone. Now the proper term for them is either a simple Atlantic round house or a complex Atlantic round house. I would be willing to bet that despite that overwhelming number of brochs up here, if you Google "broch" you'll get an example from Orkney or Shetland and no mention of Caithness.

We also have several chambered cairns (neolithic), a couple hill forts, and probably the largest stone circle in Scotland--maybe in the UK, all of it waiting to be "discovered."

At the heart of the Vikings in Caithness project is a paradigm shift. The archaeologists are committed to doing good work and to training us-- the community-- to do good work on our own. Some sites here have been subject to what Andy Heald last night dubbed "garden party archaeology"--a landowner dug out the interesting bits, chukked all the other stuff into a heap and erected monuments to himself on top of the old site.

Partly in reaction to that kind of amateur digging, professional archaeologists went through a period of "Don't touch" during which members of the communtiy were not even allowed on site. A friend who suffered through that era is now having a hard time being convinced that the AOC folks and the Castle Hill Heritage Centre really really want us to be involved. In fact, hand in hand with sharing their information about the discoveries is training us to do good archaeology.

It is very very exciting. Check out their web site (http://www.aocarchaeology.com/) and look at the web diary about what we're doing and take a look at the map--of the nearly 40 sites they have marked, we already know anecdotally of many others. And maybe just maybe they have found the walls of a rectangular building. We'll find out more about that next weekend.


First you have to make a hole. This is the very first hole of many. The auger cuts through the grass in a field in Dunnet.

This tool results in a core of about 20 cms. Each core is looked at for colour and texture and any changes either within it (a boundary) or in its inclusions--shells, bones, pebbles, clay.

Check out the web diary on www. aocarchaeology.com for descriptions of what they found in the coring last week.

Holes and More Holes

I am taking part in a great archaeological project up here. (see their web site: www.aocarchaeology.com, the Viking and Norse project in Caithness.) As so often happens, the glamorous part will come after slogging through a lot of holes. In this case, they have 1500 places already where they want to dig cores. In each of those spots, they'll take several cores. How many is several? Well, it varies, but the first hole had had nine cores removed (about 20 cm each) by the time I left for lunch yesterday.

Today when my husband stopped by, they were in a nearby field and the hole in question was down to about 9 meters depth. Each core has to be described. If the second or third or so on is not different in colour or texture or inclusions, then you do not need to describe it, but with half a dozen newly trained people hovered around a clump of dirt, you'd be surprised how many different ideas you get on what the colour is and whether it is the same or different as the previous one, let alone texture.

The process of using GPS to find each of these 1500 locations, make a hole, collect cores, and note down the descriptions on a paper form as well as on a handheld computer device is what this first phase of the project is all about in a nutshell. Lots of holes in which we may or may not find anything interesting. The aocarchaeology web site for more information about the project and other aspects of the River of Stone project. I'll post photos and updates here, too, from time to time.

As if that weren't enough excitement. I came home to discover a great hole where the laundry room floor had been. Although it may not sound like it, that is great progress. I was even happier to see that hole than the first of the 1500.

Making a hole where the laundry room floor used to be is progress because the floor boards were rotting. Considerable moisture, since the house is within walking distance of the ocean, this is Scotland, and the house is more than 200 years old, has been swirling around the laundry room not only rotting floorboards but also freezing my poor feet all the way to my knee caps if I stood there for more than 2 minutes.

In defense of those poor floorboards: they did a yeoman's job with no help from any moisture barrier or damp course. Now that we have a hole --and a heap of rubbish--we can amend all that. On the way to the concrete and the damp course and the insulation and new floor boards, there is just the little matter of yanking out a wall.

Tomorrow I will be able to come home and find a hole where a wall used to be. As quirky as that sounds, that hole, also, will make very happy. The wall that is soon to be an ex wall divides the boiler and the airing cupboard from the laundry room for no apparent reason. The boiler room is warm; the laundry room is desperately cold. If the wall comes down, then just maybe some of that warmth will wend its way into the laundry room, and, with the floor all nicely insulated, may even linger there a while. That is my fondest hope.

OK. "Airing cupboard?" I can hear some of you--probably American readers-- saying to yourselves. An airing cupboard is a place around the boiler where you can put linens and towels so they get dry and sometimes can even come out with a lovely warmth to them. In case you have wondered, the stereotype about cold and damp in old Scottish houses is, sad to say, well earned. An airing cupboard is one of those lovely low tech ways of using so-called waste heat. Personally, I never waste any heat that I manage to find anywhere in the house.