| Entry: | Archaeological field work is a craft, as carpentry or making pottery. And as in most crafts, we archaeologists use our intellectual know-that and know-how, but are, perhaps first and foremost, dependent on the knowledge of our senses. This fundamental but often tacit knowledge, not only of what artifacts and materials LOOK like, but also of how they feel against our trowel/mattock/wooden stick, what different kinds of soil/dirt sounds like when we excavate them, and so on, is crucial in our attempts to understand what we are excavating. Imagine, for instance, excavating with ear plugs tucked in: You would lose a very important source of information. Or to excavate with a hand, which cannot feel vibrations and resistance. Difficult.
As a historical archaeologist, I am used to also use my nose. It is not uncommon, for example, to identify a cultural layer containing dung, by its smell (which is actually not unpleasant!). I am sure smell is used in all forms of archeological field work, of all periods, but I imagine that it is rarer with obvious smells of cultural layers that are nine thousand years old, than of those of a few hundred years.
However, today and yesterday, I have been excavating a burial infill (u.20827 in F.7010) with a clear, very specific - and nice! - smell. It smells aromatic, as of beaver musk (for those of you who have ever smelt it…) or something like that. It seems to be small lumps of orangey-brown stuff/dirt that have the strongest smell. I have no idea if it will be possible to analyze or identify what it is, but I have collected some in a sample, just in case. Anyhow, it is exciting to get this extra dimension, of "smelling the past"! |
