The Invisible Diggers by Paul Everill

Author:Paul Everill [Everill, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Archaeology
ISBN: 9781905933105
Google: 8TcqAQAAMAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 9014959
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Published: 2009-01-15T03:30:21+00:00

University years

By dividing the participants into ‘born’ and ‘converted’ archaeologists in the previous section it was not the intention to be divisive, nor or is it to imply that one is better than the other. However, it does illustrate the two main paths taken by archaeologists and the different ways their interest expressed itself in their youth. It is interesting to see that those who had done quite a lot of excavation prior to starting their university courses felt either unchallenged by the course or that it did not address specific areas of interest that had already begun to form. P19’s relationship with his university course was so bad that he never actually finished his degree, despite trying a number of times.

P19-M38-08/2004: By the end of the second year, halfway through the second year at university, I thought what a bunch of wankers and I buggered off to [city].

Me: The [unit]?

P19: Yep.

Me: So what year is that?

P19: That is 1983. Is it 83 or 84? Oh god knows, it’s all so long ago now…

P19: Started on a site called [site]. Turned up at the gates… it was £60 a week… lot of money [laughs] …

P19: So I turned up at the gates on the Friday afternoon and said to the director ‘right, where do I live?’ and he said ‘I don’t know. I’ll see you on Monday. 9 o’clock sharp.’. So I went to a pub and met, what normally happens in my life from now onwards, met some females and they looked after me for the next year. Which was nice. Was very handy. Me and my rat…

P19: Within, I’d say about three months of working there, I’d ripped all the lumbar muscles by not learning how to use a shovel properly. So a brief point in time when I’m lying on my back doing nothing. I eventually get back, with no sick pay… my mother sending cash down to keep me alive… went back to work and [name] put me in to being a draughtsman. So I picked up a pencil, which of course is very good for the back as well, and I began drawing the abbey at [site], which I found I had a real aptitude for and I became the site draughtsman.

…

P19: Went back to university where I lasted precisely a month before I fell out with the lecturers again, so I returned to [city]. I then sort of wandered around northern England doing a bit of this and a bit of that and, believe it or not, a year later I went back to university again where this time I think I only made it two weeks.

P19 clearly felt he was going to learn a lot more by working in archaeology than he would at university. In contrast, other participants saw university as an opportunity to gain valuable fieldwork experience so that they would have a greater chance of employment after graduation.

P20-M38-10/2004: …Did it at [university], 1986-1989, and did as many fieldwork projects as I could find that were going in the department.

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