Alas, Poor York - Two Weeks Will Not Be Enough

York Minster

We arrived and immediately started fretting that we wouldn’t have anywhere near enough time to do any justice to York. The city is truly lovely – full of incredible architecture, Roman residue (wall sections, road bits, underpinnings of current structures, reused columns and the like everywhere), impressive medieval churches, gateways, and winding alleys, graceful 17^th and 18^th century buildings, and of course, its beautiful physical location – on the confluence of the Foss and the Ouse rivers. We hemmed and hawed a bit – what to do first? Before we headed for the Jorvik Viking Center. Hey, the only evidence you are going to get of Vikings is what they can dig out of the ground and this is principally about archeology, right?

A display at the Jorvik Viking Cener

examining a find

The Jorvik Viking Center is yet another example of exactly how to set up a museum to be engaging and accessible to all ages. The displays were informative and utilized a variety of media to appeal to every taste. It is actually built on the site of a dig undertaken by the York Archeological Trust. When you enter, you go downstairs where they have covered a section of the dig site that reveals the layout of a couple of Viking houses. The floor is glass so you can walk over the site and see everything. Scattered around are poles with question/ answer panels for families Additionally they had: displays of actual artifacts found on the site, interactive computer reference stations in each section, costumed interpreters demonstrating period skills (coining, spinning thread, etc.) eager to answer any questions, and touch tables with more durable artifacts. Three skeletons were on display with cards explaining how specialists use the physical evidence from burials to identify individual idiosyncrasies and develop theories about the wider society of these individuals. The most amazing of these was a life size video display that provides a capsule of the analysis of all the skeletal evidence and a reconstruction of the person (fully dressed based on material found on site) with analysis of all her accoutrements. They also have a reconstructed Viking village that is actually a ride – very Epcot. You are seated in car, the speakers are in your headrest and are given a guided tour through the daily life of the village – the creepily lifelike animatronics speak Old Norse (?) that is helpfully translated for you by your headset. The Jorvik site has a sister site, Dig that allows you to play archeologist.

After the museum, we only had the energy to get crepes and to try to locate the dig site for the morning (we kept thinking we’d found it, but there are staggering number of medieval churches in York!). After locating the correct medieval church – Parish Church of All Saints North Street – we headed for our lodging for the next week. Our walk back was enlivened/ complicated by a naked bike ride parade. They really were blocking all two of the streets we had managed to gain any familiarity with, but we could not help but be impressed with the hardiness of the Northerners – it was really no more than 52-53 degrees and drizzling on and off.

Day 1 – We met our fellow course attendees at the entrance to the Parish Church of All Saints promptly at 9:30 on Monday. After meeting our instructors, Toby, Arran, and Gary, we headed inside the medieval church for our safety briefing. The safety rule on an archaeological dig is, like in most other places, “Be Careful” because most accidents are caused by people not paying attention. We also got a short tour of the site and overview of what archaeology has gone on to this point.

The dig area has 2 halves, their names are “This End” which is supervised by Gary and “That End” which is led by Arran. We were assigned to This End. (This End and That End are fixed designations and not relative to the end of the dig you happen to be on at any given moment.) As this is the beginning of the summer digging season, and because the site has not been worked since April, the first order of business is a cleaning. Cleaning an archaeological dig site involves taking a 3 inch trowel and scraping the surface to remove the built-up vegetation & surface dust that has accumulated. These scraping must be collected in a bucket and run through a sieve to make sure nothing of interest is lost. “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, it is not.

Still, we did find several nice things. Zada found the base of a Samianware plate which is first century Roman. She also found some nice medieval green glazed pottery as well. The area we ended up working in is what is known as a “leveling deposit” which is what someone in the 18^th century who wanted to build something did to create a level surface on which to build. So what we had was a hodge podge of smashed bricks and tiles, mortar, pottery ranging from Roman to Victorian in age, rocks, clay, and whatever other fill was at hand when the deposit was made.

At lunch we took ourselves on a tour of the church which features some exceedingly old stained glass windows. There are five dating from the early 15^th century but one is from 1330 making it only 200 years younger than the windows we saw at Canterbury. Perhaps the most interesting feature of All Saints is that the bells in the tower are rung using ropes that are located inside the sanctuary. Eight long ropes loop down from the ceiling and hang about 10 feet above the floor. Arran showed us where the staircase up to the bell tower is located which is behind a very narrow door into what must be more like a spiral ladder than a stair. To look at the wall, you wouldn’t think that there was space there for a staircase. Arran said that when he went up once it was a very tight, dark squeeze and that he emerged at the top covered in spiders. At which point in the story Zada shuddered and walked away.

Day 2 – The first thing we did on our second morning was set up to photograph our feature, having assigned it context number 1358 the previous afternoon. A context number is a number used to catalogue each feature of the site. So our leveling deposit is a context and everything we excavated from it was put in a bucket with the context number identifying all of that material as being associated with that deposit. Every new feature gets a new context number. A burial provides a good example of context numbering. As one is digging, perhaps first one comes to the shadow of the coffin lid and that gets a context number. The human remains inside get another context number as does the grave. Photographing a context has to be done just so with the scale and the board with the context number and site ID being rather precisely placed so we needed a couple shots to get it just right. Our morning was rounded out with some digging and sieving.

Second session was an overview of pottery. We were introduced to examples of pottery produced and found in the York area for the last 2000+ years. This was an amazing amount of information to try to process in a short period of time, but it was very interesting, and we all enjoyed handling the beautiful pieces, comparing glazes, coloration, composition, texture, and style – just like we had any idea of what we were talking about.

After lunch, Gary showed us how to complete the data card that goes with each context. This card is a description of the soil being removed from each feature as well as what kinds of material are included. Again, the data needs to be fairly precise, so we hemmed and hawed a bit over whether the soil was grayish-brown or brownish-gray. However, we all agreed that it was friable and that its primary inclusions were hunks of brick and mortar. The inclusions need to be described in their relative order of frequency and their size range. This is important because if there is a sudden change in the soil texture or color or in the types of inclusions, it may indicate a new context.

Part of the afternoon was spent washing finds. This is exactly what it sounds like. Toby presented the group with a large bucket of finds, mostly caked in mud, from a particular context. Given toothbrushes, wooden skewers, and tubs of water, we set about washing objects and laying them out to dry. Armed with our newly acquired knowledge of ceramics, we all critiqued and argued the provenance and period of every sliver we scrubbed. This activity also provided us a chance to get to know some of the other trainees which was nice. Zada is, of course, the youngest, but there are a few university students, and some older participants like us. We are not the only Americans either as there is a Californian and a fellow Texan on site as well.

Day 3- The class convened Wednesday morning at the York Archaeological Trust conservation lab for a tour of the facility and an introduction into artifact preservation. First we were able to see several iron spear points in various stages of cleaning. When metal objects come out of the ground they are usually quite heavily corroded. They are x-rayed and this shows where the original surface of the object is. The conservator then uses a very fine sandblaster and a microscope to carefully remove the corrosion one layer at a time until the object resembles its original form. The x-ray can also reveal different types of metals showing where something might have an inlay or other decoration. It was fascinating to get an idea of what all of the shiny, beautiful objects we have been marveling at in the museums looked like when they were first excavated.

We were also treated to a talk about the preservation of organic archaeological finds – especially wood. What we learned is that nearly all excavated wood gets recorded (photos, measurements, etc.) and then discarded. The reason for this is the immense time and monetary investment required to preserve old wood. Excavated wood is usually only intact because it was in an anoxic environment like a bog or buried under think layers of silt and clay. Such wood, if left to dry under uncontrolled conditions warps almost immediately and essentially disintegrates. Preserving the wood requires careful washing and then months to years of soaking in a solution of polyethelene glycol (“PEG to its friends,” said our guide). The solution is constantly being strengthened so as to allow it to permeate the whole piece. Once the PEG bath is done, the wood goes into a freeze dryer for possibly up to a year for a large piece.

A piece of medieval pottery emerges from the soil

Back at All Saints, we spent some more time digging and sieving. We drew our feature so that it can be located with great precision within the plan of the overall site. Our drawing was at a scale of 1 to 20 meaning that on our picture 1 centimeter is equal to 20 centimeters in real life. We used a large metal rectangle that is one meter wide and two meters long. Within the rectangle are strings creating a grid of 20 centimeter square which are very easy to line up on our drawing. Of course, most of the points that we needed to plot were not neatly lined up along the grid lines so we employed measuring tapes to determine where to draw our lines. After lunch, we learned how to measure the elevation of our feature. The scope is fairly simple to use and we all got the hang of it, even the tallest of us who had to bend way down so as to see it through properly. It turns out that York is at about the same elevation above sea level as Houston. We finished out our workday with more digging and sieving and a turn at washing.

Adding a new number to the
context number record book

For lunch, we went to a little café called Circles which is located in one of the former medieval toll towers on Lendal Bridge. They serve rich, warm scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam and have excellent teas and coffee. These are the scones we’ve been looking for all over the UK! They also have an item called “caramel slice” that is a layer of thick caramel sandwiched between 

shortbread and chocolate. It is sure to be the place we eat lunch all week.

Following class, we headed to York Minster for evensong. The minster sits on the site of the principia that was the center of the old Roman fort. The first church on the site was built in 627 out of wood and rebuilt in stone starting around 633. In 741, that structure burned and was rebuilt again, larger this time. It was damaged during the Norman Conquest in 1066 and destroyed by, you guessed it, the Danes in 1075 and rebuilt once more in the Norman style. Over the centuries various enlargements, renovations, and tower collapses mean most of what we see today is from the 15^th century. However, in the lower parts of the Minster (which we will visit next week) contain some remnants of the original Norman building as well as a few pieces of Roman wall from the principia.

first century Roman potsherd
in our 19th century deposit

But back to the service. We were fortunate to get seats in the quire once again. I may be wrong, but it seemed to me that their quire was wider than others we have seen. The organ is beautiful, both in sound and appearance.  The choir singing this service consisted mostly of girls with some adult men for the lower parts. One of the girls did a solo during the Magnificat which was amazing. We all enjoyed the service, but we did wish that the people at York Minster would put a note in the order of service notifying people that the organ music at the beginning and end of the service are part of the worship and therefore they should keep silent during those parts. Canterbury and Salisbury both had such notes in their orders of service and the congregations were much better behaved because of it.

Using the grid frames to
draw our deposit

Day 4 - Thursday started with more digging and sieving. We continued to find brick and mortar bits, some nice bits of green glazed medieval pottery (some with interesting designs), bits of metal slag, and of course blobs of clay. A little while after lunch, which we had at Circles, Brad uncovered a strange void. Also Zada & Kimberly uncovered a few pieces of metal which seemed to be coffin fittings and nails. A bit more concentrated scrapping revealed a slightly darker area in our deposit which was outlined by the bits of metal we were finding. Gary and Arran felt sure we had found the top of a coffin. The area in which the team is excavating is known to have been a graveyard between the years of 1826 and 1854. Little to none of the wood from the coffin will have survived but the metal parts of it will have and the bones of the person within will be there also. By this point it was nearly tea time after which we were scheduled to be washing finds, so we cleaned our up our area so it would be ready to photograph and document Friday morning.

Out deposit with context number and half meter scale

After class, Toby led us on a cannonballing tour of York’s history & archaeology. We zig zagged all over the old town trying to take in every detail of the fascinating history of the place. In a park near Lendal Bridge, some of the Roman fortress walls remain with medieval additions to the top. Flower beds in the park are lined with stone from a demolished abbey that was once just outside the city walls. We walked along the former Roman roads now criss-crossed by later medieval shortcuts. Toby's knowledge of the city is amazing and we will need to go on the walk again next week to have any hope of retaining even some of the information.

A medieval jug handle

Day 5 – The first thing on Friday’s agenda was to document our new feature, the coffin shadow. This meant assigning a new context number, taking a new photograph, and doing a new drawing. It also meant taking new levels which we were much better at doing this second time around. The drawing took some time because there was not a well-defined edge to work from. That took us to elevenses, so we put away the surveying equipment and had cookies.

one of the nails from the coffin
we uncovered

Our specialist session this morning was stratigraphy and how to organize the information gathered from different excavation levels into a matrix showing the order in which events occurred. Using a whiteboard, Toby drew a cross section of York history from the end of the ice age through the modern day. It was a somewhat absurd tale involving a Bronze Age garden of remembrance for soldiers killed in a battle and Olaf Gilesson Thorsinson, the son of a Viking cobbler who turned to cheese making. That work of art drawn, we then worked backwards through the sequence of events creating what resembles a flow chart for each of the excavated layers.

Following lunch (not at Circles because we went to collect our dig t-shirts), we moved on to excavating our burial. We suspected that our body was in an unusually shallow grave based on the depth of the graves nearby, and that turned out to be the case. We fairly quickly uncovered the skull which was badly damaged on its left side, probably due to the shallowness of the burial. Zada was at work on finding the legs. We do not remove human remains from their graves. Our task is to document where the head and shins are so that the burial’s location is known for any future developers of the site. That data gathered, the grave will be refilled so that its inhabitant may go on resting in peace. The location of the knees along with the fairly good condition of the teeth seem to indicate that our person was a young adult when they died. We carefully sieved the fill material from the grave and when that was done, it was teatime. The excavated parts of the burial were covered with boards and on Monday we will need to go through the process of documenting our new finds.

Toby draws the matrix for our imaginary excavation

Our last session was called “small finds” and was led by Toby. We got the chance to look at some interesting objects found at sites around York, as well as some things from our site on North Street. It was another interesting session which made it clear why every piece must be carefully looked at because many of the objects Toby showed us most definitely looked like muddy rocks until they were washed.

Z working on a context card

This first dig week turned out to be everything we were hoping it would be. The experience of participating in actual archaeology will be a great help to us as we plan the digs and associated lessons for our campuses. We are looking forward to getting back next week and getting more practice with the skills we learned. But for the weekend, it is off to Edinburgh.