There is the moment. The few seconds that drag out to last a
thousand years, and in which time piles up against the gates of reality. Held
there. It is 'the' moment. The moment you are standing in a muddy field, up to
your knees in brown slime, with the incessant drip, drip, drip of the rain
sneaking down the back of your neck, and with a biting January wind
emasculating you far more effectively that a butcher's cleaver - that you
realise that it has all gone wrong. That everything has gone, not to put too
fine a point on it, completely and utterly tits up. That the straightforward
has suddenly become immensely complex, and that the future now looks anything
other than clear. Whatever that future is, it will invariably involve mud; mud
in magnificently, crevise-findingly, impressive proportions. And paperwork.
Lots of paperwork. This is field archaeology in Norfolk in January...
In front of you the JCB driver can be seen through the glass
of his cab, slowly easing back the throttles, as he leans back in his seat,
reaches for his baccy tin, and grins out at you in the rain. He knows we aren't
going any deeper. From his birds-eye view, and with decades of experience on
sites just like this, he knows he's going to be doing a lot of sitting around
for the next few weeks. Sitting around in a warm cab, idly making rollies,
content in the knowledge that he'll still be getting paid his two-fifty a day -
and all the sport that archaeological mud wrestling has to offer.
You glance to your left, at Jim, the site supervisor, who is
reaching the exact same conclusions in his head as you are. You can see the
deadpan expression begin to diffuse his young face. This wasn't meant to
happen. This wasn't meant to be here. We are both, quite literally, up to our
knees in the shitty mud, have just watched the mother of all archaeological
headaches unroll before us, and both know that the JCB driver (now reaching for
his flask and newspaper) is actually getting paid far more for this than we
are. In the warm, with the radio on... Indiana Jones it certainly isn't.
But there is the magic too. The other moment. To watch as,
inch by inch, the dark, loam and silt rich topsoil is stripped away. Each dark
inch revealing nothing out of the ordinary. And then, as the digger inches one
tiny level further down, the curtain of black earth is drawn back. The last
topsoil slides away to reveal the perfectly planned archaeology. It doesn't
happen often. A few times in a lifetime. But when it does there is a feeling of
watching a small miracle take place before you. One moment there is nothing.
The next, a ground-plan that no drawing or drone image will ever fully do
justice to. And the feeling that you are the very first to see this. The one
that the dark earth has revealed her secrets to. The miracle of archaeology in
wet ground.
The scene shifts. A few days pass and the site become home
to a high-viz convention of hard-hats and archaeological endeavour. The news is
out, and eager troops of senior archaeologists converge on this pile of mud and
history, all eager to establish their own credentials; their own place in the
pecking order that will evolve. Each trying to hide the excitement, remain
utterly professional, and objective. Mostly they fail. Above our heads drones
do flypasts that wouldn't be out of place along the Mall, whilst tablets,
computers and high tech cameras jostle beneath them. All trying to capture the
moment of discovery. The moment that a 'nationally significant' site has
appeared, out of the blue, beneath our very noses. Things that nobody has ever
seen before. Fully intact plank-lined burials dating back over 1200 years, the
outline of timber structures preserved in the wet sand and mud, and over eighty
burials. Anglo-Saxons from the old kingdom of East Anglia, buried with reverence,
at the very time the Venerable Bede was recording the seismic shifts in old
England. Each one a clearly Christian burial, with no gold and silver placed in
the graves to see them through the afterlife - leaving this world as poor and
naked as the day they arrived in it. No treasures of coins and jewellery, but
instead the treasure of knowledge; an insight into the possible beginnings of
Christianity in England. A snapshot of a community at one of the most
fundamental turning points in this nations past. The children and grandchildren
of economic migrants who embraced a new god and built a nation.
All there before us. The mud oozes, the whine of the drones
increases, and the JCB driver, content at the spectacle, rolls another fag...
What happens now is the science bit. The bit that really
separates modern archaeology from the treasure hunters of yesteryear. Each
burial is painstakingly excavated, photographed and planned. Multiple
environmental samples are taken from each grave, which will later tell us
details we hope of the flora that once grew here. Each timber is sampled for
tree-ring dating, which will tell us the exact year the tree was felled and, if
we are really lucky, perhaps even the season. And once the bodies are in the
lab then the real miracles of modern science begin. DNA will be looked at,
telling us perhaps whether some of these are family groups, and isotope
analysis can tell us even where they grew up. Where they 'locals', born and
raised in this river valley, or were they perhaps first generation immigrants
from across the North Sea? And yet, as each individual is meticulously
uncovered and removed from the site by dedicated professionals from Museum of
London Archaeology, I cannot but help feel some disquiet.
You see, the thing is, this is 'my' village. This chance discovery has come to light a
bare few hundred meters from where I live, in the very heart of my own
community. It isn't just some fascinating and distant piece of archaeological
science, but rather something close and very real. These people from a lost
past knew this valley that I stand in today. They walked by this same slow
river, worked these same fields, and looked up at the ridge-line to view the
very same ancient barrows silhouetted against the sky. In fact, this Norfolk
village with a Saxon name simply wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for them. They
chose this place, and settled here by the river crossing, between the dark
woods and the road that leads to the sea. They knew this place, and like my own
family, called it home. And that changes things.
The science has to go ahead of course. There's simply too
much that we can potentially learn from these people. Details from a time still
referred to as the 'dark ages', that is now showing itself to be anything other
than dark. But it was most certainly a time of change, a time of transition -
when a new wave of immigrants adopted a new religion. A religion whose very
early years in this country we really know very little about. Perhaps these
quiet people from the dark silt and sands hold the key to understanding that
process of transition? Perhaps they witnessed it first-hand, or were
instrumental in it taking root? Without further study we will lose that
information forever. However, what then? What happens once the scientists have
completed their tests, and we have learnt all that we can learn? What happens
then to these people of my shadow village by the river?
In some cases such remains simply end up stored away from
view for many years to come. Catalogued and concealed in museum archive boxes.
Held in trust for future scientists and future techniques which may tell us
even more than the science of today. However, with the people of this village,
the village on the river crossing, between the dark woods and the roads to the
sea, there is only one option. Only one option that the modern village wants;
and that is to bring them back here for reburial. To bring them home to the
river valley, and the landscape that they'd undoubtedly still recognise as
their own, and commit their remains once more to the earth.
Dedicated to Jim Fairclough - a truly dedicated archaeologist - generally muddy, but dedicated.
