A Day in the Life on a Dig by University of Reading Student Ella Danks

This summer I spent 3 weeks at the University of Reading Archaeology Field School – one of which was virtual, due to the curse of Covid19 – learning the skills necessary to be a field archaeologist. This season at Silchester, Hampshire, we were excavating the southern end of a Roman bathhouse. For many of us this was our first experience on a dig site, so we were rotated through specialist areas such as finds processing, floatation and photogrammetry as well as valuable, hands on experience in the trench.

Due to covid, we were sadly unable to camp onsite, instead we stayed in halls on university campus and were bussed the 30 minutes to site at 8:15 each morning. The early mornings proved a struggle but the excitement of getting to site each day and a couple strongly caffeinated drinks were enough to drag us all up and out of bed. Once we reached site, every day was started with a covid briefing before we got into our allocated trenches. Hands on archaeology was exciting after a year of online learning and even the rain was better than another video call, although snack breaks were also an important part of our daily routine.

Despite the curveball covid has thrown into all of our lives, we were all determined to make the most out of our dig experience and the outside nature of excavations meant most activities carried on as normal. We were fortunate to be on a small dig, so we only had 5 inexperienced students per supervisor plus additional experienced students. This allowed us plenty of opportunities to ask questions as well as getting practical experience. The overall dig experience allowed us to bond as a group as well as developing our archaeological skills and providing a taste for areas we could choose to specialise in, in the future. I enjoyed all aspects but personally cannot wait to get back into a muddy trench again!