Small Finds
pagetwoandsix Publications
p2&6
2022
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Please reference this work as:
The novel Small Finds by Philip Colbourn, 2022.
SmallFinds: life, love and archaeology, Philip Colbourn;
author's edit, pagetwoandsix Publications, Nottingham, 2022.
First published in 2022 by pagetwoandsix Publications
pagetwoandsix.blogspot.com
twitter.com/novelx123
The right of Philip Colbourn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored electronically in a retrieval system or reproduced in any way without the prior written consent of pagtwoandsix Publications at twitter.com/novelx123
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Small Finds
The Summer Dig
Chapter 1
Monday 28th June 2010
You know what it’s like. Things are going along just fine and then someone pulls the rug out from under your life and everything starts falling in on top of you, like Sampson in the Philistine temple. That’s how it feels. Falling masonry.
When he arrived on site, it was like a scene from a film about Passchendaele: all mud, water and ruin. It put him in mind of the poets Edward Thomas and Wilfred Owen and of Vaughan Williams’ second symphony.
It had been the wettest June on record.
He had read somewhere that July was the wettest month of the year, beating December and January, but the weather seemed to have gone haywire and, nowadays, you never knew what you were going to get from one day to the next. It was climate change, or the government, or something. In light of the recent election result, he was inclined to believe it was the government.
Dark, lumbering trucks reversed up to the gate and tipped their loads of stone in the gateway and Colin Squires, perched high in the cab of his JCB, spread the stone across the corner of the field that would serve as a car park and a place to put the temporary toilets. The loos would be arriving any day now.
Colin’s JCB glowed yellow in the damp air as he parked the mechanical beast and jumped down to walk across to the shelter of the marquee.
"You’ve got a problem here," Colin said.
The problem was that the trench, covered at the end of last year’s dig, was now full of water. It looked like a giant paddling pool.
"The students will love it," Joe said.
That was what he was worrying about. How could he let fifty or sixty students loose in this battlefield? He needed a miracle.
He got his miracle.
The next day, the rain stopped, the grass dried out and the site hut and the marquee, and everything else, dripped quietly waiting for students to arrive.
For a day or two, or three, the place exists in an indeterminate state, like an abandoned city; like a ghost ship drifting on a formless sea. The emptiness of the place seems to emphasise that it is a temporary camp; the latest in a long line of occupation.
The land remains, he thinks, but the people come and go.
There is work to do if this place is going to be ready for the students when they arrive. His grandmother used to say: ‘Everything in its place and a place for everything’. That was his aim as he stood at the edge of the trench that Thursday morning. Broderick Arnot wanted to see everything in its place. He wanted to see everything located, measured and recorded.
It's Thursday evening and Broderick is watching Joe Fitchitt operate the dumpy level. Joe has the instrument on the ordnance datum point they established last year. Knowing that one fixed point, they can measure the level of everything in the trench and its height above sea level.
This skill, that of using a surveyor’s level, is one of the skills students will learn this summer. Broderick Arnot is looking forward to their arrival. He loves working with the students. They have so much life, so much energy; so much potential.
It is one more day before they start to arrive.
“Up a bit. Back a bit. Right a bit.”
Joe Fitchitt is yelling instructions to a young woman in the trench. She moves the vertical, red and white pole backwards and forwards until Joe is satisfied, then she hammers in a peg. They make a good team: Joe, the blond giant, his hair tied back in a ponytail and his face bronzed by the weather, and Mariam, petite and dark. Mariam Bandarachaka is of Bangladeshi descent, or perhaps Indian, or Pakistani, or something. He cannot remember exactly.
He knows Mariam’s ancestors came from somewhere near Calcutta but she was born and brought up here, in Lynchcombe Sandicott, in Gloucestershire. In her day jobs, she works as a librarian at Ancester College and in the town library.
Mariam Bandarachaka moves closer carrying a yellow plastic bucket with its white pegs, hammer, surveying tape and string, and the red and white pole.
“How’s it going?” Broderick asks.
“Good,” she says. “We’ll have it straight by tonight.”
There is another yell from Joe.
“Sorry,” she says. “Have to go.”
She waves at Joe and moves off to mark the next point of the grid.
A sudden voice at Broderick’s elbow makes him jump and he turns to find Sue Feenan standing next to him. She has a problem.
“There’s no electricity in the office,” she says.
“Yes, there is.”
“No, there effing isn’t.”
“Yes, there is. It’s there,” Broderick says. “You just can’t see it.”
He ducks.
The generator has stopped and Robin Gadnall has gone home. Someone has to fix it. After a few attempts, Broderick gets it going and Sue does what she needs to do. By the time she has finished and leaves the office it is almost ten thirty.
Broderick Arnot sits at the desk for a few moments longer. Here he is, he thinks. He is the director of the student summer dig for the School of Archaeology. He has mixed feelings about it, to be honest. Of course, this is where he likes to be, out in the field, on a dig with the students but it has meant cancelling the family holiday and, to add to his discomfort, today is Alison’s birthday.
He pulls the laptop towards him and types in a message:
Thursday 2 July 2010. Dig HQ. Lynchcombe Sandicott.
Hope you’ve had a good day. Happy birthday!
The students start arriving tomorrow. Everything’s ready but I’m knackered.
Turning in now. Sleep well. Love you, Brodie
He clicks the button and his email shoots off round the globe, hopping from one satellite to another and back to planet Earth before landing, he hopes, in the computer in the corner of the living room at home in County Durham. He closes the computer and pushes it away, but he doesn’t leave. He stays where he is and lets the day seep away around him into the summer night.
There is a newspaper lying on the desk and he picks it up and runs his eyes over the headlines but he is too tired to read it and he puts it back on the desk. He read it earlier. He knows what is in it.
He unplugs the computer and puts it away in the drawer, locks the desk and pushes himself to his feet. He stretches and rolls his shoulders and goes out, turning off the light and closing the door.
Outside, he shuts off the generator.
Silence.
Softly, it has started to rain.
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Chapter 2
It is Friday evening when the students begin to arrive: the first-years.
They pitch their tents in a semi-circle, facing inwards, like wagons drawn up in a corral, as if they were setting up camp in a hostile environment. Jem and Tom have mountain tents. Lisa has a blue and grey dome, which she intends to share with Daniella when she arrives. Joshua, who has been here all day, has a low, rakish blue tent he bought in Durham at the end of last term.
That evening, Broderick Arnot gives them their induction: the dig protocols, pastoral support, emergency procedures, camp tasks and duties. Then, he gives them a tour of the site, pointing out the main features of last year’s excavation.
Saturday morning, the minibus comes with more students and, by the end of the afternoon, there is a small village growing up all around the first-comers.
When most of the students have arrived, Saturday evening, Robin fetches fish and chips from the village and the students stand in an orderly queue outside the marquee chatting, waiting to be fed.
Sixty portions of cod and chips with polystyrene tubs of mushy peas and baked beans are laid out along the trestle tables with plastic bottles of tomato sauce and sachets of salt and malt vinegar scattered amongst the packages.
Broderick Arnot watches as the students collect their food.
Joshua Williams hangs back. Typical Joshua. When he does get to the table, he chooses mushy peas and goes to sit on the grass with the other students from his year. The grass is dry after a day and a half of breezy sunshine.
They eat in silence and drink the spitting cola from white corrugated cups.
Life is good.
Supper done and the debris cleared away, the students disappear and calm descends. Broderick waits outside HQ for the last few stragglers to arrive.
He is not supposed to have favourites and, as a rule, he does not but, this year, he has to admit that he does have a favourite. It is Daniella Forrester. It is Daniella he is waiting for.
She is late and he is beginning to worry. She has been at a family event in Solihull and was intending to drive down to the dig when it was over. She had been hoping to leave about six. It is fifty miles from Solihull to Ancester and it should take about an hour. It is now eight o’clock.
It is probably nothing.
Back in October, at the start of the new term, the new students gathered for their first lecture in the old lecture hall at the university. That room has seen better days. Dust from disintegrating curtains gathers on the windowsills.
Broderick waits for the students to settle.
It is a drab room, a standard lecture hall, and with the widows obscured with grime, there should be nothing to distract them from his lecture but, like in every other year, they find ways of amusing themselves.
They spend their time carving their names into the desks and inking risqué symbols on the benches. It seems appropriate in a perverse sort of way. Their carefully carved signs mimic graffiti found in Roman cities all across the empire, from Pompeii to Ephesus, and from York to Ancester.
Two lads are sitting five rows back with two girls. Joshua Williams is one of the young men and the other is a guy called Jem Chancellor. Broderick watches Jem Chancellor whisper to Joshua Williams. Joshua feigns disinterest. Joshua is writing on his pad and is giving every impression of taking the lecture seriously.
It was two years since Broderick met Joshua Williams at the Corn Hill dig in Ancester and now, here he is, a first-year student in archaeology. Broderick feels some proprietorial pride. It is some sort of success. Broderick is sure that Joshua will do well if he is not distracted by the likes of Jem Chancellor.
Jem Chancellor turns his attention to the girls. He writes on his pad and pushes it along the desk. It is a game. Jem is trying to set up Joshua Williams with one of the girls. Broderick has seen it all before. He will give them extra work at the end of the lecture to give Jem Chancellor something to think about.
Jem is the type who will skim through his coursework and triumph regardless, unlike Joshua who will have to work hard to get a good result. In all likelihood, Jem will rely on Joshua’s notes and, in the end, get a better degree.
Jem nudges Joshua. Joshua pokes him back.
The girl sitting next to Jem Chancellor is an attractive, dark haired girl called Daniella Forrester. She is bright. She had the highest A-level score in the first-year intake. Poised and intelligent, her interview was impressive. She will go far.
“You will be here next summer,” Broderick says, “so pay attention.”
He puts up a slide on the screen and goes on to explain.
“We opened the trench here at this site this year but, to be honest, it was a bit of a disaster.”
Jem Chancellor raises his hand but Broderick ignores it.
“In the next picture,” he says, “you may see someone you know.”
The next slide comes up and all eyes turn towards Joshua Williams. Joshua looks embarrassed and keeps his head down, writing on his A4 pad.
“Mr Williams is the man to see if you want to know more about the dig.”
Jem nudges Daniella and Daniella leans forward and touches Joshua on the arm. Joshua looks up. Jem Chancellor leans back and smiles. Job done.
Broderick cannot remember now what the assignment was. It would have been about the end of Roman Britain, something along the lines of:
Evaluate and compare the role of Magnus Maximus and Constantine II in the failure of imperial authority in Britannia at the turn of the fifth century.
It is well after eight o’clock when a small red car pulls into the field and stops on the hard standing in front of the loos. A blaze of golden light floods the field from the west. Daniella gets out of the car, sees him and walks across.
“Hello, Mr Arnot. Are the others here?”
“Yes, they’re all here.”
“Whereabouts?”
Over there, he says, indicating the far side of the field.
“Great. I’ll go and find them.”
“Here’s Joe. He’ll show you,” Broderick says.
“Joe! Can you take Daniella to the first years?”
“Daniella?” Joe says.
“Yes. Hi,” she says.
They go off, threading their way through the tents, bathed in the golden light of a summer evening.
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Chapter 3
Sunday 4th July 2010
It’s Sunday morning. Breakfast is over and Sue Feenan is handing out jobs and detailing the students for the domestic tasks: for the catering and washing up, welcoming visitors, cleaning the loos and other slavery around the camp.
Broderick Arnot, as dig director, tells them how things will work each day, and week-by-week, for the whole six-week cycle of the dig. He gives them a quick sketch of what happened last year and explains how, last year, with the topsoil removed, the students from Ancester College cleaned down to a level where archaeology had begun to appear.
In his head, he is rerunning the events that had brought them all here to this marquee today.
It was almost a year since Professor Hashay insisted he take on the university summer dig. As a result, he found he had two digs to worry about. He had started a dig for the students at Ancester College that summer and now he also had the dig for the university. He did the obvious thing and put the two digs together. The two-week Ancester dig of last year became the six-week Durham dig of this year.
Now, in the marquee, he divided the students into teams and allocated each team to a different patch of the trench under the supervision of a staff member. Each team had a feature to investigate: part of the main building or one of the outbuildings, a possible rubbish heap or a question-mark pit.
These features were all speculative but one of them was less speculative than the others. Last year, they had found a well; filled in and full of interest.
At first, it was no more than a patch of darker soil on the cleaned surface but, as they dug into it, they stumbled on something that had turned their world upside down. It was one of his main objectives this year to relocate this feature and investigate it further. He put Rachel Feist in charge of this student team but they would also need the assistance of specialist teams from other places.
He had spent much of the past nine months lining up the support they needed and securing the necessary funding. He had engaged teams from South Wales, London, Oxford and Cambridge. The team from South Wales was coming next week to build the airtight sampling facility.
Later, a team from South London University would come to take the samples for conservation work and, once the conservation work was complete, they would pass the samples on to the analytical unit at Cambridge who would scan them to reveal their secrets; hopefully. A radiocarbon team at Oxford was on hand for dating the organic materials.
The whole effort should satisfy the grant awarding bodies. The only thing lacking was a European angle and he was working on that. It would be there next year. He was calling in his contacts in the Europe-wide Roman archaeology network.
After the morning briefing, with the students sent off for their first contact with the soil, Broderick found himself alone in the marquee.
He made himself a mug of coffee and sat in one of the plastic chairs next one of the trestle tables. He was all hyped up and needed to spin down. He stretched his legs under the table and took a few deep breaths. The moist air was flavoured with the essences of fried bacon and strawberry jam.
At breakfast, Mariam had reminded him about a medallion they’d found at an earlier dig in Ancester; the Corn Hill dig. It was an enigmatic object and it was now in the local museum. The thought of the museum triggered another thought, an obvious one. He should have thought of it before.
A student visit to the museum would be a very good thing. He would have a word with Sue Feenan and see if she could arrange something. There was plenty to see at the Anteum Museum.
The medallion made Broderick think of the bones they found on that dig, buried under rubbish between two late Roman buildings, not far from where Mariam had found the medallion. The body of a young woman had been dumped in an alleyway, used at the time as a communal rubbish dump.
They found pottery and broken tile and iron nails amongst the industrial and domestic rubbish covering the skeleton and a layer of leather-working waste. Roman Anteum must have been a very different place to modern Ancester.
He should not impose his twenty-first century sensibilities onto times and places long ago but it was difficult not to because twenty-first century sensibilities were all he had to go on. Archaeology was all about the imagination.
The maps, geophysics, JCBs, trowels, forensic analysis and whatnot only took you so far. In the end, it was the archaeologist who dug out connections.
Who was that young woman? What had happened and why?
It would have been the years either side of AD 400 when the town of Anteum was a provincial capital. Like so many other towns in Britain at the time, it was falling into disrepair. Workshops and smallholdings proliferated within the circuit of the walls and many once-fine civic buildings lay derelict. The bureaucracy, and the rich householders, had moved out of town.
Leaving the marquee, Broderick Arnot stood at the edge of the trench and watched as Alan Clearwater introduced students to the archaeology of the site. The day had turned out fine, ideal conditions for excavating. A light breeze blew from the southwest sending clouds and their shadows chasing across the field. The students clustered around and dispersed to different parts of the trench.
It was three years since Broderick Arnot met up with Alan Clearwater at York. Alan had phoned him full of excitement. He had a proposal. Could they meet?
They met at the railway station and walked along the Roman walls to find lunch in a pub a few minutes from York Minster. Broderick ate his sandwiches while Alan explained his ideas.
Alan had secured funding to do his PhD at Oxford and he had been studying the old maps held by English Heritage and looking at aerial photographs both at Swindon and at Cambridge University. Roman villas lay hidden in the landscape on the lower eastern slopes of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. His proposal was to find them and excavate.
They met up again at Ancester a few weeks later. They drove around the district, walking the ground, climbing field gates and peering through hedges, knocking on farmhouse doors to ask for permission to work on the land. At the end of the day, Broderick had taken a taxi and, in the time it took to drive to the station, the taxi driver had all but taken over the project.
“You’ll need those fields ploughed. I can see to that.”
Robin Gadnall knew everyone. He could organise everything. He would organise everything. It was the beginning of a very fruitful relationship. Robin was now general factotum for the dig and, if you needed something done, Robin would know the man or woman to do it.
It was later that year, this was 2008, before everything was ready. They had finished the Corn Hill dig in Ancester at the end of August and now, in November, it was time to do some field-walking to follow up on Alan’s ideas.
People have always walked across fields, stopping once in a while to pick up a stone or some other object that caught their attention. Those people may have wondered, with half their mind elsewhere - on the conversation of a companion or on the sunshine, or the birdsong in the hedgerow - what this object was or how it came to be there. But it was not until the eighteenth century that people, with more than half their mind on the job, or no companion to distract them, went beyond simple wonder and attempted to pose and answer those questions.
Broderick had great respect for these old antiquarians, as they were called, because they had laid the foundations for modern archaeology. In the twentieth century, the antiquarians-turned-archaeologists had harnessed their natural curiosity, and a predilection for random walks, to the scientific method. Field walking became an indispensable part of the modern archaeologist's toolkit.
For Broderick Arnot, it was the joy of archaeology. This was where it all began.
Robin had been right. The fields, then under pasture, needed ploughing and Robin contacted Colin Squires at Glebe End Farm. Colin had ploughed out the grass on those parts of the three fields they wanted to look at and Broderick and Alan returned in November 2008 with a team of volunteers.
They gathered one Saturday morning with the mist clinging to the hedgerows and an autumnal nip in the air. Mariam Bandarachaka, Joe Fitchitt, Rachel Feist, Joshua Williams, Broderick Arnot and Alan Clearwater spread out across the first of the three fields. It was a raw day. They stamped their feet and clasped gloved hands under armpits in an attempt to keep warm and, on his signal, they trudged forwards, ten meters apart, scanning the soil for signs of previous occupation.
A group of local girls, Elyssia Gadnall, Robin’s daughter, among them, with a couple of her friends, stood at the edge of the field calling out and asking what they were looking for. Calling out for Joshua Williams mostly.
It took them all morning and most of the afternoon to walk the three fields and, at the end of the day, they did not have much to show for it apart from a few muddy bits and pieces in small plastic bags but it was a beginning.
Broderick took them to the restaurant in the village for a meal and to warm up.
At Christmas, they met again. Rachel had prepared lists with identifications and descriptions in so far as she had been able to identify and describe the things they had found that November day. It was better than he had hoped.
From Field 1, they had pieces of floor mosaic (tesserae) made of grey and white lias or limestone; fragments of wall plaster with a red and black design painted on it; fragments of brick and of the Roman roof tiles called tegulae, and one coin: a cententionalis of Constantius II minted in Trier around AD 350.
From Field 2, they had a fragment of quartz conglomerate quern and what looked like Forest of Dean pottery and pieces of flue tile.
From Field 3, they had more tesserae, blue and red; more ceramics - possibly Oxford red slipware and Dorset black burnished ware - and two coins: a radiate of Tetricus from the third century and a copper alloy as of Caracalla from the end of the second century. Not a bad haul for a short day’s work.
They had been lucky and it all pointed to the fact that the villas were just where Alan had predicted. After some discussions, they chose one of the sites, the one down Water Lane outside Lynchcombe Sandicott, as the principal focus of their investigations. Rachel suggested making it a training dig for her students.
Broderick had written up the results of the field walk with Alan. It would make a useful note for an archaeology research journal: Evidence for late Roman villas near Ancester in the county of Gloucestershire. He had written it but he had not yet submitted it to the journal. Life had been too hectic.
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