England 2024 - Appalling Dog Treats at the Boot Fair

When I'm over to northern England on my archaeology jaunts I always make a point of attending the Hexham Car Boot Fair the Sunday before the dig begins.  Why?  Well I always make the trip with carry on only luggage and sometimes it is helpful to pick up a few extra, cheap garments.  And its fun, always something peculiar to see, especially if you are a bit jet lagged and culture shocked by a recent trans Atlantic flight.  And this year the Boot Fair - its basically a flea market -did not disappoint.

I found a booth that sold the most unusual treats for dogs.  Oh, I'm used to things like pigs ears and cow hooves, sometimes Hank gets that sort of treat at Christmas.  But....Ostrich Neck???

And how about:  Rabbit Ears!

There was only one item that was fully sold out.  I wonder what Puffed Beef Lung is like?

They had big bins of "Hairy Buffalo Ears".  This of course prompted me to pose for another silly photo.  Note the Mr. Whippy ice cream truck in the background.

But the weirdest one of all was also the least specific.  I was not tempted to take any of this stuff home.  Just imagine trying to get through security checkpoints and various agricultural control stations.  "Sir, what is this?"  "Well, its a trachea."  "Whose trachea was it?" "Well....I'm really not sure......"

Oy! Tim the Tool Man!

As in the US, England in recent years has seen a revival in small breweries.  So generally when I'm Over There I try to drink the local ales.  But of course there are also those that are sold regionally or nationally, and in a pinch my go to is the quite serviceable Timothy Taylor.

Actually, my pint here is from a local brewery now sadly about to go out of business.  "Leaky Tap" was pretty tasty but not relevant to our story.

Because right around the corner from the Black Bull pub in Haltwhistle I saw this:

Hardware House.  Is this where Tim the Toolman Taylor ended up after Home Improvement wrapped production?  If I were bold enough to walk up those steps would Wilson peer over the red brick wall and say "Hi - di - Ho, neighbor!" in a Cumbrian accent?

Home with the Turkeys

Back home.

It's a long journey.  We woke up at 6am back in Northern England.  A fellow excavator gave us a ride to the Newcastle airport for a flight leaving at 9:30. 

Newcastle has a weird airport....you have to get there early as with any international flight.  But after clearing security you wait in a large, heavily commercial hall until 20 or 30 minutes before your departure time.  I guess they want you to buy all kinds of duty free swag.  The smell of high priced perfume is pervasive.  But its sort of fun.  There are always Stag Parties and Bachelorette Parties heading off to various destinations.  Elaborate and often embarrassing costumes are often involved.

One hour flight to Amsterdam.  With a tight connection on the other side it was nice that they read out the gate connections for you before landing.

We walked straight from the Newcastle flight to the Minneapolis one which was already boarding.  International transport is really quite remarkable.

I spent the 8 hour flight watching movies.  I had not previously seen Barbie, which I mostly enjoyed as unserious satire.  

Short walk to the shuttle which took us to the larger town near us, then a short drive home.  

6am to 6pm, although of course we were flying west and crossed five or six time zones.

When we got home there were wild turkeys walking around on our front lawn.  Having never seen such critters in town before I did consider the possibility I was hallucinating.  But the photographic evidence suggests otherwise.

A few days of catching up are in order.  I'll have additional thoughts on travels and digging over the next couple of weeks.

Magna 2024 - Amphibians

No update yesterday.  It rained all day and the site could not be walked in much less excavated.  We had talks in the morning and a nice walk in the afternoon.  

Today, our last day of the session, started out better.  I was delighted when at start of work a wheelbarrow was turned over and a rather handsome toad had taken up residence under it.  I guess Thursday was even too wet for him.

And of course, no opportunity for a silly photo should ever be missed.....

Then it was most of a day of digging.  Everything was just a little harder.  The trowel comes away coated in mud.  Makes you remember that they are usually used by brick layers to slather on mortar.  Every bucket and wheel barrow clings to its load of extra heavy stuff.  And you have to step carefully on slick surfaces.  Still, a fair bit of work got done.  I was just too busy to take pictures of it.

I'll have some follow up thoughts on the dig in a few days.

Cheers!

Crrroooaaakkkk!

Magna Deluge 2024

It rained.  A lot.  No excavating today.

In the morning we went over to the "original site" at Vindolanda and had a chilly, damp site tour by Bellissima Marta, the archaeologist in charge there.

Being Italian, nobody gestures at wet stones with greater verve than Marta.  It was good to walk in the old places again, to see the walls and roads we once worked on.  It's been a bit of tough going over there as well this season, 1920's excavations left a mass of stirred up archaeology, and until the debris and spoil has been shifted its slow work.

Then for the afternoon a lecture on Roman pottery.

Forecast tomorrow is again looking very moist.  Not much can be done about that.  It is a chance to reflect on what I've dubbed "Badger's First Law".  The less successful the excavations, the more fun the nights in the pub.  The reasons for this are obscure, but it is consistent across many seasons of ups and downs, of sun and rain.....

Magna Dig 2024 - Day Seven

 As we are actually digging some distance from the actual fort/civilian community there are fewer "features" than on my various digs at Vindolanda.  It's an interesting "zone" of the Roman defense system, one that has not been much studied.  But in place of walls and floors we get a fair number of.......ditches.  Just channels to move water.

Only moderately interesting.  I'm pretty sure my ancestors left the Old World because they were tired of digging ditches and, well, here I am back doing it.  But its all part of the patterns that help us understand things.  And there is the occasional bit of stuff to remind us that Rome was once here.

When I come back from these jaunts I'm often asked if I found anything old.  Why yes indeed.  In addition to the above sort of thing the pathway to the excavator's hut is made of various stone bits.  Including ancient fossils!

Magna Dig 2024 - Science n' Stuff

Archaeology has gotten a bit more "scientific" in recent decades.  And the dig at Magna reflects this new focus.

This is Wally, named of course for the nearby Hadrian's Wall.  It is monitoring various aspects of underground chemistry.  Water levels, pH, oxygen levels.  There is a concern that climate change is damaging the anaerobic layers deep under ground.  

The fence is there to keep sheep, especially the new lambs, from getting too frisky around the electronics.

One day we had some University types show up and deploy this equipment:

It looks like something you'd use to shock night crawlers out of the ground.  It actually is some sort of new geophysical imaging gear.  I asked, and was assured that the nightcrawlers are in no way bothered by whatever rays or beams are being sent into the earth.

We do a fair amount of sampling of pits and ditches.  In theory you can figure out what people were doing, what they were eating, what sort of plants were growing on the site in times past.  The samples collected are stirred and sieved.  

Not as exciting as excavating, but when I was assigned to this duty a sudden thunderstorm brought everyone back to the dig HQ looking like drowned rats, so there was that.