Guest Post: Anya Ingram on Geography and Archaeology

*Although the blog has been very quiet this last year, the Lux Project hasn't. We've been in the lab looking at Egyptian funerary objects, giving public talks, visiting archives in the UK, making worksheets for school children learning at home due to COVID-19 (available here: https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/classics/the-lux-project.html), and doing research from home.
      Since we can't travel these days, let's hear from one of our most enthusiastic and productive volunteers, Anya Ingram, on her experience taking part in her first archaeological dig in sunny Portugal. Since Anya is a geography major, she brings a very useful set of skills to her archaeological research and demonstrates just how important it is to take an interdisciplinary approach to any research project. Her post also expresses one of my favorite things about teaching and leading a project like Lux: the excitement of discovery and of piecing together the ancient past bit by bit. 

This summer from the end of July until mid-August, I joined the Castelo Archaeological Research Project. This team is excavating a Bronze Age dig site in the Central Alentejo region of Portugal. I decided to participate in a dig site near the end of the winter academic semester. It was a spur of the moment decision.

As a Geography student dabbling in Classics on the side, I was intrigued by the relationship between the two disciplines. Geomatics are used frequently at archaeological sites. Remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are very useful tools of analysis. Originally I was hoping to participate in a geomatics specific project. While these do exist, it wasn’t possible with my schedule. During my search I found the Castelo project and I asked the faculty at the University of Winnipeg if they were familiar with the project archaeologist. With the green light from our faculty I signed up, a few months later I was in Portugal!

The Castelo site is a fifteen hectare hilltop settlement. Most recently, this hill has been used as a eucalyptus plantation. It is stunningly eerie with the early morning mist.

    Figure 1. The team in the mist

Our site location was idea for digging in the heat. We were able to tie tarps to the trees to provide some shade, and at the top of the hill we got a bit of a breeze. However, in the middle of summer you can’t escape the heat. We would wake up early to get to site so we could get our days digging done before lunch. It was quite funny to have the whole group sitting on the curb of our dig house in the small town of Redondo waiting for our ride. Quite the loiterers. 

 Figure 2. Waiting at the dig house for the van that would drive us up to the site

Digging a bronze age site means we almost only found pottery. For the first two weeks I was working in a new pit we opened this year. We found almost no pottery! It was a confusing area; trying to interpret what rock was part of the old hut structure and what was simply bedrock was a difficult task. It would be understandable to be defeated spending hours of digging and brushing feeling like you weren’t making any progress. But this didn’t happen. Good company makes all the difference. We played music on a Bluetooth speaker, taking turns playing DJ; we sang ( and danced around every now and then), we talked, we laughed. The work felt like it took no time at all, because we were having fun.

Figure 3. Test pit two being cleaned for analysis

In my third and final week, I was moved to the first pit which includes a very large structural wall. This pit yielded enormous amounts of pottery. I spent my whole third week in a corner about 1.5m squared. In this area I found a few very large thick pieces of pottery that would have formed the base of a vessel about 1m in height. On another day I found multiple pieces of a small decorated and burnished vase. This was the most highly decorated piece our entire team found this season, I was beyond thrilled. One of the most rewarding moments of the experience was getting to clean those pieces of pottery after our time at the site. Each of our afternoons were spent sitting in the courtyard of our dig house cleaning pottery.

Figure 4. Test pit one.

Our team ate lunch and dinner together every weekday. This is not a practice shared by all archaeological digs but it was a wonderful experience. We would eat lunch prepared for us by a local restaurant owner named Vicente. This meant we got to try loads of different traditional dishes of the Alentejo region. In the first week we ate all of our lunches with the two other archaeology groups operated in the area. Lunch for forty-two!

Figure 5. Lunch for the whole crew!

The courtyard in which we cleaned pottery was also used for our shared evening meals. This was just for our group, not all forty-two. 

Figure 6. Setting up for dinner in the courtyard

The primary shared spaces of our dig house were the courtyard and the balcony. The balcony was a group favourite for relaxing in the shade. Reading alone or playing Mario Kart on the Playstation Switch were common choices.

Figure 7: Time on the balcony.

On Saturdays we had field trips to nearby cities to visit relevant historic sites and museums, but also to have fun. The last night in Redondo before the field season ended we had a picnic at an old castle on a hill nearby. The views were spectacular, it felt like you could see all the way to Spain!

Figure 8: Views from the Castle

I could have participated in the digging of any archaeological site. I would have learned something from any of them as well. But I’m very glad I chose this one. I got to live in a beautiful little town in Portugal for three weeks in a house filled with twelve new friends.