A Day in the Life of an Archaeological Field School Student

Trench 3 after we finished de-turfing on the first work day.

I'm now three weeks into my archaeological field school on the island of Gotland, in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Sweden. This is a five week course, so there's just under a week of digging left and then a week of lab work and research before the course concludes on August 9. I did have a bit of archaeological experience prior to this trip, but it consisted of two weeks of volunteer work at the Bethsaida Excavations in Israel (while on a study abroad trip to the Middle East in 2011). This experience has been very different so far. So to give a little picture of what the dig has been like, I'll relate the story of a typical day at the Gotland Archaeological Field School.

7:30 a.m. - Convince myself to get out of bed and get ready for the day... usually a slow process.

7:55ish - Head to the dining hall to eat a hearty Swedish breakfast (yogurt, granola, linden berries, hardboiled eggs, fresh fruit, and bread) and pack a lunch to take with me to the excavation site.

8:30 a.m. - Board the bus to drive from the Gotlands Folkhögskola in Hemse to the excavation site at Paviken, on Gotland's Western Coast. (This is a great time to catch up on sleep, write in my journal, or read a book.)

9:10 a.m. - Arrive at Paviken and hike through a nature reserve to our dig site, a Viking Age harbor and manufacturing site that was inhabited from roughly the 7th- early 11th centuries. The site was excavated in the 1970's but the site director died before he could finish his records, and before he came to any conclusions about the site. Naturally, this makes our job more difficult, as we're working with Pars's incomplete and confusing records, while trying to make sense of what we find, too.

10:30 a.m. - Fika. Otherwise known as a coffee break, this is a very important part of every Swede's day. Included in the mandatory tradition is a very tasty cinnamon bun called a bulle. I do not protest.

12:00 p.m. - Lunch. 'Nuff said.

2:30 p.m. - Fika. Yep, Swedes are serious about this coffee break thing.

4:30 p.m. - Ride the bus back to Hemse and collapse onto my bed until dinner.

5:30 p.m. - Food. Delicious Swedish food.

6:00 p.m. - Free time, which for me means working out, showering, then engaging in some combination of something like goofing off online, writing, drawing, Skyping, or working on my research project for the field school (ceramic!). There's even another fika in the evening, which usually includes cookies - if none of the other groups staying here at the Folkhögskola have stolen ours, that is.

11:00-12:00ish - Sleep.

So that's a typical day. The archaeology part can be fascinating, tedious, exciting, boring, and frustrating, but over all it is pretty rewarding. I'll post later with more details on what the digging part is actually like, as well as some more history on the site, Paviken, and Gotland in general. It's really an awesome place for archaeology.

Hello, Art History!

So here I am again, writing a blog post when I should be doing homework (editing a research paper on the Old English poem The Ruin, in this case). Ha ha... Oh well.

I've had this plan for a while that I should graduate a semester early, just because I can. Why not get out of the undergrad world three months early, if it's doable? And, up until today, that was my main plan. It meant that I had a very tight schedule planned, with very busy and challenging semesters ahead (each with 15-17 credit hours and no room for fun electives). Yesterday, that began to change.

Illumination from a Medieval
manuscript of the Song of Songs

I was planning to take a graduate-level course, "Old English," this coming Fall and then its companion course, "Beowulf," the following Spring, but my university decided to change their schedule for these two courses and removed them from their regular rotation. So, I thought I'd do an independent reading version of at least Old English this Fall, but the professor said, "Naw, you don't need to; it should be offered at least by the Fall of 2013," [which is when I planned to graduate]. But then I might not be able to take Beowulf if they push it back a whole year. So, I started thinking, maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all to stick around for that eighth semester... I definitely would not have so much stress in cramming my semesters and hoping to fit all of the right classes.

And then I noticed a poster about Art History minors today in the fine arts building on campus. I greatly enjoy studying art and its history, and it happens to be extremely relevant to the field of Medieval Studies. I have already taken two courses in Art History, am signed up for another this Fall, and plan to take one next Spring. I checked the requirements; I'd only have to take one more Art History class to add it as a minor. Would that be another reason, perhaps, to stay for one more semester?

Yes.

So I added an Art History minor. Just got the email from the Registrar, informing me that the change is now official. I'm pretty excited about it.

(And, you've got a few days left to vote in the poll for what you want me to write my next blog post about! Go vote! ...Then look for the resulting requested post by the end of the month!)