Writing this diary entry, I am mindful of discussing my life during Covid-19 when we have a UK excess death toll well in advance of 60,000 and rising, and the job losses, food poverty, fear and anxiety experienced by so many. I really want to stress therefore that this is intended as an honest chronicle of my daily life as an archaeologist in 2020 and is not intended to downplay the experiences of others facing far, far more difficult times.
My Day in Archaeology 2020 is proving is as strange and difficult as the majority of 2020! It is something of an understatement to say that 2020 has been challenging and this is not something I see getting any easier any time soon.
Today is the first day since mid-March when my daughter has been back in school and it is a day that has been met with a mixture of anxiety (us) and excitement (her). Starting the day with the pre-school routine was strange but oddly comforting. Settling down to work this morning in an weirdly quiet house I have checked the emails and, as in most other days since the pandemic hit, there are no invitations to tender for works. We have had no new projects since the shut down in March, and no start dates on any of our projects which have been placed on hold. There has been a tiny (but reassuring) trickle of enquiries over the past fortnight, but nowhere near the levels I would expect for this time of year.
Unsurprisingly within the emails I have received over the last few weeks the issue of safe working during the pandemic features highly and this is a big shout out to Prospect Union for all their incredible hard work in providing comprehensive guidance and today I have updated the Risk Assessments in preparation for some works hopefully restarting in the next few weeks.
The next pressing issue was reading through the consultation/advice documents from The Chartered Institute for Archaeologists as the current government musings over “newt counters” has decidedly ominous overtones for the profession. I absolutely love my job but working in commercial archaeology at the moment is a time of near constant anxiety, on the one hand worrying about how staff are being kept safe on the construction sites which have continued to work, and on the other worrying about those within the workforce who are not currently working. The short-term contracts and high staff turnover of our profession is hardly conducive to building yourself a financial safety net! In the coming months fears over a recession, the proposed deregulation of the planning system and the continuing uncertainty of a looming Brexit all add to a gloomy picture for the future for the profession and this is something that is always there tucked away in the back of my mind.
The remainder of today is a research day, and will be spent looking for examples of the deposition of human remains in natural features during the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic period and pulling together some draft illustrations. Research and lithic illustration are the parts of my job which I most enjoy, and the Neolithic is the period which I am most passionate about studying so I am hoping that total emersion in this project will help block out everything else going on in the world for a few hours before picking up my 7 year old and finding out what she makes of the “new normal” in school.
Apologies I feel that maybe this post is not entirely in the spirit of this event, but nothing is normal right now and the profession is in flux. It is hard to explain why I love what I do when I am not sure how much longer I will be able to carry on doing it and I am scared for the future. We must be honest and upfront about the struggles we are facing right now.
I am a partner in a small commercial archaeology unit based in North Wales. I have a pretty varied worklife (well I usually have a varied work life - but right now everything feels very much like the same thing day after day after day)......... My normal works involve a mixture of projects including desk-based assessments, illustrations, building records, evaluations, watching briefs, writing reports and excavation. I have a particular interest in British Prehistory, particularly the Neolithic Period, and Welsh Nonconformist architecture.