Early in 1980 a mini bus full of youth on a government unemployment scheme were tipped onto a field in the Cambridgeshire fens. Our task was to shift the mud to reveal an iron age settlement. No hydraulic machinery, no geo phys, just spades, trowels and wheelbarrows. The archaeologists fed up with my whingeing gave me the special task of excavating a small area of ditch surrounding one of the iron age round houses that we’d found.. I have never forgotten the thrill of revealing an eggshell, preserved perfectly in the mud as if just thrown out a few moments ago. That connection is a moment that I’ll always treasure.
scraping the surface
two thousand year old eggshell
the smell of breakfast
