Digging

So the last post was in a bit of a rush as we were leaving. I'll put a bit more now, but I'll have to leave again in the middle, no doubt. I'm in the middle of about 5 months worth of backlog on things I want to say (I have a little notebook full of it!) so will whittle away at it while I'm here. I'll even try and post some photos.

But for now, Romania. How's the digging, going? For the first two hours of the first day, I asked myself over and over again: What have I got myself into? Why did I sign up for FIVE weeks of this? Do I really find this interesting? This was as I used a small trowel to put small holes in a square meter of dirt, pick through the dirt so that it is in small pieces, then put the dirt in a bucket. Over and over and over again. Occasionally, I would find a shard of pottery about an inch across, or a small piece of earthen clay (neolithic building material) and dust it off and put it aside, but for the most part it was very monotonous. My back aches, my fingers get dry from sifting dirt, my arms, knees, and legs are sore from trying to stand in the correct positions.

However... as the time passes and my hole gets a little bigger, as does the pile of things I find, the monotony bothers me less, and I enjoy the sun shining (in the few seconds it does, the rest of the time I shiver in my 50 layers of clothing), the birds chirping, the lack of fences, the puppies mingling around us, the shepherd and his flock on the paddock next to us. It will be a long 5 weeks, but I am glad that I have done it. Perhaps if I do it again, I'll choose something where a little more is likely to come out of the ground, but this Petrich culture is interesting even if they really didn't leave us much. And even though I'm doing one square meter in a million, and with all of us we'll only do 20 squares in a million, and even though I have a reputation in the group for always finding nothing in my plots, in the whole scheme of things, I am doing something. And it's interesting and relaxing and I'm happy.