Postcards from the past: daily routine on a dig

Tags

archaeological dig, cleaning, Jordan, Pella, sorting

My series of Postcards from the past came to a sudden halt a while back, mainly because I reached a point where I had plenty of memories, but no images. I’ve decided to deal with that hiccup by means of a words-only interlude.

The story so far: in 2000 I was a paying volunteer on an archaeological dig at Pella in Jordan, with a team from Sydney University.

There were three aspects of the work I did on the dig: cleaning a variety of finds; sorting the morning’s haul; and action in the trenches. I have photos of work in the trench, but for some reason the camera didn’t accompany me when I was cleaning and sorting.

Inside work

On alternate days we worked inside, or around the dig house. My first archaeological job was at the cleaning table, toothbrushing bones in water: camel or donkey teeth; a small lower jaw; some brown marbled bone; and heaps of slivers I didn’t dare discard. In the midst of bone I came across part of a small ceramic oil lamp. I cleaned mud from its spout gently with a toothpick.

There were two unexpected jobs. One was poking holes in cheap plastic sieves. The other was the manufacture of cotton buds: we sat there, intently winding cotton wool around a matchstick. We used the buds to clean glass with ethanol. This required deep concentration: the glass was delicate and often sharp. In my pile, there were a few very fine clear fragments, some with a subdued opalescent surface, some with dirt-filled tunnels below the rim; and a few heavy green bits. One piece stood out: a beautifully shaped handle, green with long swirls of red.

More energetically, we relocated boxes dating back to 1984 from between two mud brick walls, forming a chain and working in dusty camaraderie. I absconded before we were too deep amongst spider-webs, beetles and scorpions, fearful of the legendary camel spiders that gnaw hunks out of camel humps.

Pottery sorting

After a morning in the trenches, buckets of shards were lugged across to the yard of the dig house and emptied one by one onto mats for sorting.

Steve, the dig director, circulated, keeping an eye on volunteers and offering advice: “That big heavy clumsy piece is a tile. Keep it: it’s complete” or “That green piece there with rounded ribbing stays. There’s nothing else like it in this lot.” I was anxiously meticulous, until Steve explained the process in rigorous scientific terms: “Look at it. If you think that’s one of those, chuck it on on that pile. If it looks much the same as the other stuff in the pile, that’s where it belongs.”

All painted pieces qualified for keeping, as did any piece at all distinctive or unique. At the end of the session we counted the discards and dumped them in the pile outside the compound, carefully mapped as a scrap pile. When we left the dig, we each souvenired a few shards.

This work was necessary and sometimes exciting, but the trenches were where the real action was.

Things I see on the beach

Tags

dogs, on the beach, people, pippy, seagulls

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

(William H. Gass: American novelist, short-story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor)

Oh, if only! I do try.

1

At the low-tide line I watch a purple and white pippy, quite a large one, trying to retreat into the sand. However, it has a problem. It can’t seem to tilt itself from horizontal to vertical. It heaves itself through 30° … through another 30° … and finally it reaches perpendicular. Now, it faces another problem: the wavelets aren’t coming in far enough to moisten the sand so it can burrow down. I watch, urging the waves on. One comes close: it moistens the under-sand enough for a slight descending wiggle. Five more waves retreat a good metre away. Then, what it’s waiting for. A bigger wave shushes in, whirling far beyond the pippy, and when it recedes all that’s left is a faint bubble under the sand.

2

An elderly man and woman arrive separately, him in a white ute, her in a small silver car. They set up camp: a blue striped chair, towels, a bilum bag they don’t unpack. He slathers himself with suncream and they set off barefooted along the beach. They’ve only taken a few paces, when they stop and turn to face each other. The conversation becomes vociferous, but it isn’t at all hostile. After a few moments they walk on and shortly stop again, face each other, laughing and still speaking emphatically. This is how they progress further and further along the beach. At their last face-off as they disappear in the distance, she stretches up and reaches under the broad brim of his straw hat and they kiss, still laughing. After a while they return along the beach, amicably, side by side. When they reach their beach camp they strip off and head for the water. She high-steps her way out through the lengthy shallows; stops before the water deepens beyond her knees; slides down into it. He keeps walking out to the wave break, frolics for a while, and finally torpedos into shore, head tucked down, shoulders hunched, body a straight line. They lounge in the sun for a while, and then head back to the white ute and the small silver car.

3

A colony of seagulls clusters together on the sand, all looking out to sea. It must be grooming time. Their beaks are busy amongst the feathers. Some stand on one leg, wing or tail raised,displaying white spots on black, or black pinions. One puts its head down and scurries purposefully, snapping at the air. A few nestle down in hollows in the sand. When people pass they turn their backs and move in a leisurely way up the beach. Occasionally one glides in on spread wings and lands daintily before it takes a few stumbling steps into stasis. When a number of new arrivals land there’s a flurry, and a few aggressive moves, but the colony soon settles back to the business of grooming and gazing out to sea.

4

It’s midday on a sunny weekend. There are a few groups on the sand: a couple in the shade of a striped beach umbrella; a mother and daughter sheltered by a beach tent; a gaggle of young men and women taking pot luck with the sun; a sleek slim couple, silver, tan and startling white, warming up for immersion with a passionate embrace; a touch of elegance on a flat patch where the dunes meet the bush, she in a bright orange dress, he in a straw boater, both with a glass in hand, something decanted from the lime green cooler bag between them. Then there’s a solitary beach bag disgorging towels.

No-one dances in blithely today: the sea which has been pleasantly warm for a few weeks has dropped a few degrees. They toe-test before choosing a place to deposit their gear, and flop, and discard T-shirts, and then move slowly through the shallows, arms raised against the initial chill, or to twist hair into a knot. They become a stumbling silhouette, carving a human shape out of the blue sky, the blue sea, the whiteness of breaking waves. For a while they are mere heads, occasionally acquiring shoulders as the swell diminishes or they bounce above it. Very occasionally they sprout arms and a face as they catch a wave. They don’t stay in long, and recover a complete body and human features as they return to the beach. A woman with a heavily tattooed thigh shakes her head at a tilt to remove ocean from ears, and anxious fingers adjust straps and elastic.

A solitary figure carrying a coiled yellow towel and a pair of sandals moves slowly along the beach, a nearly empty canvas bag hanging across his back.

It’s lunchtime and the beach begins to empty. At the boat ramp, an ageing woman dressed in bright tight yellow, vividly hennaed hair piled into a horizontal french roll, a large yellow flower nested under it, is talking to a local who never speaks to anyone. As we pass he says: “Anyone can talk to me any time, love.”

5

An unlikely trio of dogs frolic while their owners surf: a whippet, whippet thin, almost two-dimensional; a solid sand-and-charcoal mastiff with frown marks that match the body markings; and a brown cattle dog, alert and ready to round up any sheep or cows that stray into his bailiwick. In the shade of the hill a black dog lies, tied to a rock with his lead. A taciturn local arrives with his hyper-friendly Jack Russell who talks to everyone, his owner to no-one. A bouncy young woman tries to pretend that her dog hasn’t just defecated on the pristine beach and surreptitiously kicks sand over the gleaming turds. Later on she comes back with a plastic bag, but she doesn’t excavate. A woman dressed in buff is halfway a long the beach, an obedient black dog at her heels. In the distance there’s a fisherman with a black shape lying beside his chair. I’m eager to add another dog to my tally, but the black shape turns out to be his tackle bag. But here comes Maisie to complete the complement of Spud dogs: a large black bounding dog, full of tail wagging and licking friendliness. She sits beside her owner (who carries a reticule of her excrement) and begs, paws up, for a treat.

This post is number two of a series inspired by icelandpenny who does such things so wonderfully. In reply to my comment on a post of hers, she said Go and settle in somewhere delightful & just see what happens … A reversal of the usual, eh? Let it come to us, instead of rushing around looking for “it.”

Night noises: dusk to daybreak

Tags

beach, bush, night noises

1

In the bush

The light patter of rain on an iron roof. Slabs of bark whirled from tree-trunks landing with faint thud. The crack of a metal can contracting in the corridor. The rising whoop whoop whoop of a nightjar. The barking of a neighbour’s dog.

A short time of silence when not even the breeze breathes.

And then morning sounds. The crowing of a faraway rooster. The revving up and fading laugh of a pair of kookaburras. The shrill throbbing of cicadas. The clear trilling of a lyrebird, interspersed with its rattling, whirring and thudding.

And then the padding of bare feet, heading to the kitchen to make coffee.

2

At Potato Point

The voices of children playing in the street as light fades. The hissing and snorting of possums. Occasionally a slight asthmatic wheeze or the irritating zzzzzzzz of a mosquito.

The crunch of gravel in the drive at 2 am as my son leaves for work.

The long whimpering of an unhappy puppy. The call of the wolf-whistle bird. A twitter, a trill a throaty rise. The happy-birthday-to-you bird. The magpies’ liquidity. The friar bird with its irritating grackle-grackle-grackle. A harsh wick wuck wuck. All the smaller twittering that one day I’ll be able to name.

And always the continuo of the surf.

Still life, written

Tags

clothes, food, written still life

In a short period, only a few days, I am solicited over and over by possibilities of still life. Sue offers many examples: books, embroidery, wine bottles, old cameras, artfully posed. DesleyJane arranges her subjects for RegularRandom with great artistry. Paula and Suzanne transform pears and celery. All these temptations come from the blogosphere, but I know I don’t have the knack of casual arrangement that still life requires.

Then my writing companion comes out of left-field with an invitation to attempt still-life in words. She sends me a link to Wikipedia on still life. On a wildly windy Sunday morning I read it avidly, and begin to see potential. Portraits of my aunts through inherited objects. The celebration of a season. A slice of life in words. Contrasts, maybe bleakness and plenitude. I make a list of still life artists and still life ideas to pursue.

And then I raise my eyes from the iPad and see my first subject in front of me.

1

They lie there on the black and white geometry of the carpet, a carpet bought to please the eye and encourage it to take the mind rambling in evening cogitations. About philosophy. Wire gates. Solar-powered washing machines. Poetry. The nature of the mind.

The jumble of clothes gives no hint about the mental life of their owner. The red track suit pants are worn thin. Those round shapes are holes. They are comfort clothes, strictly in-house. Their use-softened fabric wrinkles and folds, catching shadows in its creases. A pseudo-leather belt coils out from under them, a snake to the idle unfocused eye. Behind them is a scrunched up black waffle-pattern undershirt, discarded once the day warms up, and black rumpled work trousers. They offer protection against march flies, nettles and sunburn when the man works amongst his corn and chillies and tomatoes and herbs in the wire-netted dome-garden visible through the window. The sketches lie, one on its side – the one with the green splotches of deck paint – the other one pointing a dance-step away from its mate. This is a composition in basic black and white and red, with just a small accent of green.

I’m a woman of excess. Once I’ve spotted one subject my eye is attuned. The man is not only a gardener but a caterer. He brings me my breakfast fry up. And lo, another still life.

2

Out of the old cast-iron frypan, handle long since gone; from the old fuel stove, oven and hot water tank long since gone, comes Sunday morning breakfast. The host places it on the black and white geometry of the carpet, so I can appreciate its contrasting circularity before any attempt is made to desecrate it by mastication. The old silver knife and fork are angled perfectly and begin the theme of gleam. They don’t match – nothing in this house does – but they have history. The plate is simple white china with two maroon rings marking its rim. A few minute pieces of onion loiter away from the main meal. The food is arranged to show off its components, and topped by a glisten, a gleam, a sparkle, a blink, a coruscation, a scintilla of olive oil. The egg is neat, shaped by a teflon egg ring, the yolk bright yellow and off centre, the white crinkled brown around the very edge. The potato slices are elongated oval and well-browned, interspersed with glossy half rings of onion. The small tomatoes, picked five minutes ago from the garden, have collapsed into a bright splotch of red.

Hotchpotch 12

Some of these photos are harvested from morning mini-walks around Potato Point and in the bush, often after rain …

Some are miscellanea from beach prowls … or from a joy flight …

One is the lomatia along my front fence …

The last one just tickled my fancy …

Backpacking in Syria and Jordan, 2000: background

Tags

Jordan, Syria

What am I, a woman in my mid-fifties, doing, lugging a backpack around Syria and Jordan on my own in 2000?

I’ll tell you. I’m trying to keep up with my family. 

J is walking the scenic rim, guided by a mud map and a snake, and sailing a boat across Moreton Bay – he’s never sailed before.

H and his mate (and dogs) are exploring the tip of Cape York.

S has just embarked on fatherhood.

F and her then partner are packing their pushbikes for a ride through Borneo, Sarawak, Bangladesh and India.

R is picking tomatoes manically to top up the budget so she can cycle alone through Laos, southern China, across the Sinai, through Jerusalem, to Sardinia, via Paris.

And me? I’m living a banal, routine life, going to work and coming home (mind you, sometimes that’s three days later.) I settle down with the Saturday paper, and suddenly I’m on full alert. Sydney University is looking for paying volunteers to go on a dig at Pella in Jordan. That’s me. Always interested in archeology since reading my uncle’s books as a child. In funds, because that same uncle has just left me money. Familiar (sort of) with travel in the middle east after three weeks in Egypt a few years before.

So I apply, face the interview, get my teeth and appendix checked, and feel secure in the thought of travelling with the group.

Until I settle down again with the Saturday paper. This time I open the travel section, and I’m confronted by a full page colour photo of the Treasury at Petra viewed through the slit at the end of the siq. That photo! Well, I think. Nothing daring about hopping on a plane with a group. What if …? And before I know it, I’ve booked flight to Syria and extended my stay in Jordan.

That’s how I end up in Damascus, backpacked and travel weary, muttering the mantra against my terror: “Other people do it: why not me?” There’s my hotel, the Al Haramein, just up that alley. A man accosts me offering to carry my bag. I say “No thanks”. He lunges and tweaks my nipple. I say “Get out of it.” He disappears. I feel my self-confidence expand: if I can deal with that, jet lagged and in a strange place, I can deal with anything.

On my first morning alone in the Middle East I make my way to the ancient covered market and walk under ruined Roman arches to the Umayyad mosque with its striped walls and unreadable Arabic calligraphy. I sit on the cold marble of a decayed fountain and watch the orange juice man throw water over his uncut oranges; boys playing shuttlecock, old men drinking tea, boys cantering on horses decked in bells, cars moving through impossibly narrow spaces. Then the haunting call to prayer.

That night I ditch my go-go-go itinerary, because I’ve discovered the pleasures of following my nose and of pausing. 

Such is the personal background to my next series of Postcards from the Past. The other unspeakably awful background is the destruction and death taking place in Syria now, which make my blithe reminiscences seem almost indecent.

A weekend in words

Tags

goanna, Kelly Slater, laziness, weekend

I arrive at my weekend B&B to find my host in unaccustomed shorts and thick gloves heading up the hillside clutching something purposefully and carefully in his hands. I whizz over to see what it is – a small goanna, beautifully marked and vibrating with panic. It's already put its jaws around J's thumb which he had to expose to untangle it from the garden netting. I refrain from delaying its release by grabbing the camera and it races up a tree out of reach of galumphing humans, even if they are only trying to help.

The afternoon is very warm and the river reserve J has been shaping for a few years has been slashed by council (at last) so we pack seats, insect repellent and wine and head down to one of our favourite places under a huge old casuarina to watch the long long day draw to a close. We can hear the murmur of small rapids – there's a lot more water in the river than there usually is at this time of the year. A young kookaburra half-laughs above us and then arrows across to the other side of the river.

The sun is sinking and provides us with another pleasure as it back-lights a red spider spinning its evening web racing down, up and across in a very business-like way.

The next afternoon is very hot, so we turn to the river. We walk down the track where I used to wash carrots and beetroot in market-gardening days, and cross towards a developing island. We pass a small eel heading in the opposite direction to hide very effectively in the weed. I'm not wearing my glasses so I have to take J's word for this. Today I lose my balance in the deep sand and topple straight in: none of my usual dithering before immersion. The water is almost blood-temperature and no one else is about.

We sit in the water in the shade, chatting in a desultory way and looking for schools of tiny fish. When we've cooled off, we dress and return to our wine spot. It's been a busy day (three beaches will have a post of their own.) As light fades I sprawl on a cushion and look up through the branches of the massive casuarina, river wrack caught in its branches from the last flood, a good 40 feet from riverbed. The fine tracery of needles and nuts against the sky is replaced by the tracey of branches as I look higher. There is no sign of last night's spider or its web.

On Sunday J spends the morning with water: transferring water between tanks; drenching the garden to tenderness; and trawling through boxes of fittings in search of the appropriate nipple as he refines the fire-fighting system. There has been a small bushfire on Nerrigundah Ridge, alarmingly close and putting paid to summer complacency.

At lunch time we head off to an art exhibition at Bingi where a friend is exhibiting exquisite botanical drawings. The Priory is on a hill with 360 degree views to the sea and over Tuross Lake to the mountains of the Great Divide, and the wind is rioting, slowly spinning a shark sculpture. J was last here in the early 1980s for a clearing sale, nosing around to see what he could find of use in our new poverty-stricken rural life. No sign now of the old sheds and paddocks. They've been replaced by a manificent house, marble floored, and a garden inhabited by sculptures and statues. The artist, Barbara Romalis, is trying to place a delicate pottery nativity scene and can't find a base to her satisfaction. J scrutinizes the paintings by Peter Mesenberg, and pronounces them excellent beyond envy.

My bush weekend is drawing to a close. After lunch we return to the river, startling a foot-long fish (bass or bream?) and loll and idly splash and talk about the magic vastness of geology and other smaller matters.

I return to my beachside home to prepare for the imminent arrival of my Queensland family: son and his partner, two grandchildren, a dog, two kayaks, two motorbikes, eight or nine surfboards, pushbikes, camping gear, and maybe even the bread maker. My resident son amuses – or is it bemuses – me with a video gone viral of Kelly Slater's home-made surfing wave, ending a very pleasant Australian weekend.

 

 

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