Silchester Self-Assessment

In less than an hour I'll be leaving for Paris for the next 3 days. But before I go, I had to write a self-assessment paper for Silchester. Since it did the job of describing my time in Silchester and what I took from it, I figured I'd post it here to fill everyone in on my time in the mud.



My time at Silchester provided me with a learning experience that could not be recreated in a classroom. I’m a hands-on person and I learn by doing, so my time spent in Silchester was the best look at archaeology I’ve so far been able to have. Of all the things I learned there, the most important is that I unfortunately feel that field archaeology is not something I wish to pursue further as a career. However, I still have an interest in archaeological finds, and I would like to continue to work with them.
I worked under Sarah Lucas in the Southwest corner of Insula IX. My first task was cleaning a flat surface, where I learned the proper way to use my trowel. I mostly enjoyed digging, but at the beginning it made me nervous because I kept fearing that I was digging too much and destroying a feature that I just didn’t see. I also had a bit of bad luck in my first week when it came to digging in interesting areas. I moved on to clean an edge along the Victorian Trench; the edge was difficult to clean and the ground was very dry and thus hard to break through. I also didn’t have a single find for the full 2 ½ days I spent cleaning it. After I was done with the edge, though, Sarah and Tom let me move on to a feature next to where I was digging: a very clearly defined post hole. I was excited about digging it for most of the week, and it was already planned so I could start digging right away. However, after only half an hour of digging, I hit natural and my posthole was over. I found two miniscule pot sherds and nothing else. Disappointed, I then went on to do the section and plans.
After my anticlimactic posthole, I wanted a break from digging. Sarah and Tom gave me a task to do that concerned the row of stake holes that align with House 1 in Grids 12-11. They wanted me to find and identify the remains of the holes and try to work out the relationship between them so that we might make a conclusion regarding whether or not they were made at the same time. I poured over old plans and context cards and really enjoyed searching for all the clues that I could find about the holes. However, I was met with frustration when I found that there was some earlier confusion about the stratigraphical relationship between the holes and the fills that they cut into. I wasn’t very good at matrices or stratigraphy, so it was hard for me to understand what was going on at first, but I got much better at it the more I dealt with the problem and with the help of Sarah and the Archaeological Database, we managed to solve the problem. After understanding the stratigraphy, I was then able to look at the site and label the stake holes correctly, something I had struggled in doing before. Though the paper-chasing got difficult and confusing at times, because of the work I did on that I had a greater understanding of matrices, stratigraphy, and could more easily understand a plan and visualize what it represents on site.
Once the paper chase was over, I did some more cleaning, which was a welcome change to sitting in the planning hut going over confusing context cards. Tony and I found a large pot in Grid 1 and we spent several days eyeing it while trying to find the cut of the pit that it belonged to. Sadly, we never managed to find the cut, and we were sure that we wouldn’t be able to do anything about the pot, but Sarah was nice enough to let me give the invisible fill a context number and dig it out in the last hour before we left. It wasn’t the whole rim, but it was a sizeable amount of it, and I was very happy to finally have a significant find.

My pot and I

Also on site, I worked at the Environmental cabin doing floating, sieving, and sorting, and the finds cabin doing washing and learning more about the types of finds happening on site. I’d already done extensive work with Environmental sorting and Finds washing in Crete with Saro Wallace, so there was nothing new there. During my time at Silchester, I was lucky enough to sit in on a talk with Mike Fulford, the director of Silchester, to learn about the dating of pottery found on site. It was fascinating to watch him look at a sherd and give information on what pot it came from, where it came from, and when it was possibly made. I have no idea how he did it, but it’s something I’d like to learn.
I think if I did continue on with archaeology, it would be more focused on Finds. I am glad that I had this time at Silchester, because without it I would never know for sure that working in the field wasn’t for me. Like Thomas Edison said after 8000 failed trials of the light bulb, “Well, at least we know 8000 things that don't work.” Field archaeology just doesn’t work for me; I’m sure I’ll eventually find what does.


End Essay.

Also, we had a pirate night where we everyone dressed like pirates and charged the local pub. It was fab.

We be lady pirates. Aarrrrrrr!

Now off to Paris! Let's hope we make it through France without being mugged this time.