After picking Sophie up from the airport in Paris, we spent a day in the capital, and popped into the Louvre which is always worth a stop. Unfortunately it was unpleasantly hot within the museum, so after not as long as I would have otherwise liked, we ended up leaving (though not without a peek in this gloriously golden room).
After our sight-seeing in Paris, we headed for Lille to visit the family as we always do in France. Staying in a chambre d'hote meant we weren't able to cook our own meals, however our welcoming host Vincent was a rather spiffing cook, and we were fed extremely well for the duration of our stay. It was at this point that we parted ways as I had organised to go on an Archaeological dig in Spain, to try and get some experience in osteoarchaeology to see if it was perhaps a subject I would like to pursue for a career.
Sanisera archaeology institute was the name of the organisation I went with on my archaeological field school, and I was unfortunately very disappointed. The list of reasons why is rather long, however I will keep it to my main points of contention.
The location however, was one thing I couldn't complain about as it was set on the beautiful island of Menorca.
However pretty much everything else was a waste of time. Treated like unruly children, we had no cooking facilities, and no living room or area to hang out in, only dormitory style bedrooms (this in itself I have no problems with) meals were held in a separate building where the kitchen was padlocked and we weren't allowed in, and the food was to be honest, inedible. After the third day I stopped going to meal times and starting buying prepackaged sandwiches because they were slightly more tasty. I still cringe in horror at the prepacked lunches we were given out on the field (blended tomatoes mixed with water into a sort of sauce that was then put on bread rolls, turning them into total mush).
Mornings were taken up by digging in the field before it got too hot - this part I have few complaints for (apart from how budget they were with tools, giving us extremely old brushes, bent knitting needles and teaspoons instead of proper equipment) the actual digging itself was as enjoyable as digging can be, and I was pleased that unlike my previous dig we weren't pulled away every time we found something slightly significant, instead allowed to carefully work on everything we excavated. However, we were given almost no explanation or teaching on methods or what we were actually looking at or how to excavate, instead simply being used as manual labour to dig out the bones from the graveyard.
I was working in one of the complicated grave sites, which had a jumble of bodies within it, all mixed up. The thinking was that there was two adults and a child, though we couldn't be sure at that early stage. The most tiring thing about digging (except the heat which was an obvious factor) was the awkward position one had to lie in to get into the gravesite itself. Due to the depth of the gravesite, you had to lean half of your body into the pit causing you to constantly strain your muscles and blood rush into your head as it hung downwards, causing massive headaches and neck aches. However excavating the graves themselves was rather interesting, as working close-up with bones was something I had always wanted to do.
I spent most of my mornings I was on the dig excavating the adult human skull which was near the surface, and I found this very interesting. The afternoons were meant to be taken up with lab-work, which was the main reason I signed up for this dig, as digging on--site was something I had done before and therefore in itself was not hugely useful to me beyond the first few days of excitement getting to work in a necropolis. The problem was even this became dull when we simply worked on getting bones out and weren't explained any context as we went. I was hoping for experience in the lab and learning about human osteoarchaeology, and in this, I was the most disappointed.
Lab work turned out to me mainly washing pottery and bone, something I had done a lot of on my last dig, and required nothing more than using a toothbrush and some water, teaching me nothing at all. The tiny segments I did have of useful learning and not being used as free labour looked like it could be interesting, which made it worse that we only did this twice for about half an hour in the time I spent there - instead of every afternoon as promised.
My first experience of doing something useful was learning to put a human skeleton together correctly and identify each bone and where they went. Having never taken biology at school, learning all the names for bones was quite a process for me. We were using real bones found on earlier digs at the necropolis, which was something I liked as it meant they weren't in perfect condition and were sometimes fragmentary. Additionally it added a sort of gravitas to the situation which I think is always important when dealing with human remains (though we do sometimes give them affectionate nicknames)
Unfortunately aside from this opportunity and a ten minute lecture on the basic differences in morphology on male and female skeletons (again very interesting and I would have loved more of this) we simply washed and dug. I understand the need for the boring work which needs manpower, but having paid for an informative field school, I was extremely disappointed.
Woes aside, when we did have time off (which wasn't much as we finished in the evening and only had two days free for the entire dig, no weekends off) myself and a Canadian girl who I'd made friends with would go exploring when we could. Enjoying the sunshine and the small beach a ten minute walk from our dorms.
My dorms were down a cute alleyway in the heart of the main city (and a pleasant two minute walk from all the bars serving cheap and ice cold beers! One must always look at the upside of the situation).
I ended up saying goodbye to this place rather earlier than expected after cutting the dig short upon realising I had learned the little I could from it - we were being taught nothing else useful, and treated simultaneously as basic manpower and untrustworthy children was something I had little patience for. I hope to one day to return to beautiful Menorca under better circumstances!
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