Parker Miraldi
5:30 am. The sun is yet to rise, but between the temperature and the humidity it already feels like 95°F out. However, despite the air being almost thick enough to drink, we are all eager to get back to digging. Due to the shooting schedule of the British military base the Vigla site sits on our mornings are extremely limited, and we have been pushing hard to finish as much as possible before the end of the season. This time of day is one of my favourites – the sunrises from up here are stunning, and the excitement is infectious.
I’ve been working in EU25 with fellow Reedies Emi Clarke and Kayra Lyons and two students from MSU Denver, and although I’m admittedly pretty biased, I do think we have one of the best units on site right now. Or if not the best certainly one of the weirdest! Last week we pulled up over 100 beads – the most of any unit in Vigla history – and this week we uncovered an unexplained mound of plaster. Plaster is lighter than rock and easier to break with the hand picks we typically use to excavate, so we have to be very, very careful in order to avoid destroying the shards. The full process took upwards of two days! Thankfully the plaster bits seem to be relatively isolated to just one section of the trench, but the plaster-free areas still have some surprises in store for us.
Primarily, the architecture. Both the walls we’ve uncovered so far shoot off at different angles, creating a series of oddly slanted rooms. Was this intentional, or were the builders just exhausted from the heat and sun? I would understand if they were – digging with the modern conveniences of sunglasses and snack coolers is hard enough, and I can’t imagine how bad it would have been building these walls without any sort of sun protection! I don’t think delirium can explain the scattering of slabs we’ve been finding though. In addition to the one we uncovered last week we’ve found at least five more, all clustered around the northern wall. All are too large to lift at the moment, and combined with the plaster they make for a very puzzling scene.
Marginally clearer are the small artefacts. I don’t think we’ll know what they were used for until we have a better idea what the structure itself is, but at least we can identify them at first glance. On our first day this week I found a small bronze nail – it doesn’t look like much, but it’s my first special find of the dig and gives me some strong motivation to keep going!
We continued finding chunks of metal slag throughout the week, as well as bits of rock that looked deceivingly like metal but ultimately weren’t. Our trench supervisor Elise is an actual saint for putting up with our endless questions of “is this just a cool rock or something actually significant”! The vast majority turn out to just be cool rocks, but I’ve noticed all of us getting better at discerning between those and other materials throughout the dig. Primarily we’re finding sherds of pottery, but this week also brought a healthy collection of bone fragments and some very pretty shells. And of course, more beads! While they were exciting last week, I think we are all pretty over them now. They are absolutely everywhere across the trench and incredibly easy to miss while digging, so progress in general goes slower for us than some of the other trenches. Despite their frustrating nature though I’m curious what they could have been used for, and I wish we had more context!
Perhaps our answers are coming, and they’re all hidden just beneath the next layer of dirt. I think the mystery and intrigue been my favourite part of excavating so far – I feel like I’m reading a novel in installments, where the next chapter won’t be published for another week. Sometimes I just want to race ahead to read the last page, but I know our slow pace is important for squeezing as much information out of this site as possible. After all, nobody will ever experience this exact excavation in its original form ever again! Even something as seemingly small as the colour of the dirt or elevation of an artefact could prove essential to unlocking the mysteries of this site, and so we’re taking the time to record it all while it’s still in situ. I feel lucky to be playing a role in this site’s story, and I can’t wait to see how it continues to unfold.