The Archaeologist

You would think archaeologists send away everything they dig up for analysis or preserving, everything out of the ground a time travelling treasure, but this is not the case I quickly learned. I was new, just out of college, and our lofty textbooks had not prepared us for the pragmatic realities of being out in the field. Literally, I was in a field.

And it was a nice one, a few kilometres outside the town, enclosed by trees. Crows gossiped amongst themselves in the branches, and the sky wasn’t bothering us with rain. We were in an exploratory trench, looking for features that were bronze or iron age. This site, on the summit of a low hill, was a meeting point for different tribes, a ceremonial centre rather than a lived-in fort. That’s all I knew, which wasn’t much more than the experience archaeologists knew, each newly excavated feature adding to a puzzle with no picture on the box.

Having learned to keep an eye out for charcoal or bone, or anything else that could be dated, I ignored the stones that popped up from the clay, putting them to the side if they were large, or into my bucket with the dug out earth if they were small. Except one stood out, a black stone with shallow grey rivulets, almost perfectly rectangular in shape and smooth to the touch. It was the shape that caught my eye, as if someone carved it for some purpose. I showed it to Meg, an archaeologist on her third year at the dig-site. She turned it over in her hand.

‘It’s definitely a stone…but after that I’m not sure, show it to Dr. Clifford.’

‘Ok.’

‘If it’s not archaeological you can probably keep it!’

‘Oh, really,’ I said, ‘that’s…well I’ll see what he says.’

I hauled myself up from the trench and walked over to wear Dr. Clifford, the lead archaeologist was sitting, writing his notes. He looked up.

‘I…the shape of this caught my eye.’

He took the stone and rubbed his thumb along it.

‘That’s black limestone,’ he said, ‘it’s very soft so it cracks like that.’

He handed it back to me. Just a normal stone.

I told Meg what he said.

‘You can keep it then!’ she said.

‘Yeah…’ I replied.

‘If you want to, don’t worry it’s ok to keep it he won’t be looking for it.’

We went back to our digging. I put the stone with my pile of big rocks, hoping Meg would forget about it. What she said was true, plenty of the archaeologists were wearing jewellery they had fashioned out of cool stones they found on digs, it wasn’t unusual. And the lead archaeologist had implied he had no need of it. But that wasn’t really the issue.

This was a fairy field. We weren’t supposed to be in it at all. That’s what my grandmother would say if she was still alive. Fields like this should be left alone, and if you mess with them the fairies won’t be happy. And you don’t want the good folk to be unhappy.

And I had wrestled with this already, whether I should go on the dig at all, whether I should even study archaeology. But I love history, and there was something irresistible about the idea that you could find new history, old objects and places not seen in hundreds of years. That our whole understanding of an era could be overturned in one stroke of the trowel. I had squared that quandary away with myself, deciding that archaeology wasn’t really ‘messing’ with anything, because we came with good intentions, to know rather than to exploit. Anyway, archaeologists aren’t superstitious people, Meg expected me to take the cool rock home – it would look good in a necklace. But if I did take the rock home it would upset my dead grandmother, and the guardian crows, not to mention the good people…it was one thing to be in the field, but to take something away from it with me?

I tried to put the stone out of my mind entirely. I nearly succeeded, but before I left for the day, Meg asked me if I was keeping it, excited for a new recruit to have their spoils.

‘No,’ I said, not explaining why out of embarrassment. Although she’d hardly suspect the real reason, I was equally concerned she would now think me some kind of rock connoisseur, too good altogether for some black limestone. I dashed towards my car.

I stopped to light a candle on the way home. Something I often did with my grandmother. I sat in one of the wooden pews. We are not ‘messing’, I reminded myself, we are researching. It’s just a rock, a nice rock, I could find it again tomorrow. I stayed there for a long time, thinking. The light through the stained-glass windows slowly fading.

Could I live like this? Logical one minute, listening to voices and premonitions the next? It was just a rock. A soft, rectangular rock. It was just there, in the ground, nobody using it. Anyone who did once claim it is long dead, and they were real. A human like me. If I took their rock they wouldn’t know or care, it’s just a rock.

But if I put it on the mantelpiece I would blame it for anything that ever happened, an illness, a dent in the car, or something worse…and getting rid of it wouldn’t help unless I returned it to where I found it, which would be impossible once we closed up the earth again in a few weeks.

The rock stayed in my pile all the next day, unsettling me. I kept myself to myself, worried my stone snobbery had gotten around and no-one would want to talk to me anyway. Was I going to stay mute for the rest of the dig? By the end of the day I had made a decision.

‘Hey Meg, do you want this?’ I said, holding out the black limestone. ‘I really need to clear out my room, I have so much stuff my mom’ll go mad if I’m carting home rocks.’

It was a stupid excuse. But Meg laughed.

‘Alright, if you’re sure.’ She put the stone in her pocket; she would create something out of it later. And it would bring her no harm, she isn’t superstitious.