In July 2017, I stepped off a plane and walked
face-first into a wall of Bermudian heat that I’d wear like a coat for the next
month. I was just shy of my nineteenth birthday and very nervous. Among the
many things in my over-packed duffle bag was a trowel that my parents had given
me as an early birthday present. My memories then became a blur- I recall being
picked up by Dr. Jarvis and a young Xander Cook, desperately trying to listen
to Jarvis’s comments on noteworthy places we passed, seeing Bermuda’s brightly-colored
everything for the first time, and
suppressing the queasiness that a long day of travel can bring on.
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Ewan helping Katrina take
the perfect opening context photo
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My
next distinct memory (which I look back on and laugh at now but was at the time
mortifying for an insecure
eighteen-year-old) was my first square. After a day or two of lectures and
local tours, day one of digging on Smith’s Island arrived. I crouched down by
my unit, checked and double-checked my context form, and held my birthday
trowel, excited to ruin its pristine glint with my first scrape into Bermudian
soilJust as the blade made contact with dirt, a
voice behind me noted that my trowel was too big and suggested that I use one
of the field school’s communal ones instead. (Katrina Ponti, if you’re reading this, thank you for breaking the news
to me as gently as possible.) I tried to think fast to recover from this serious faux pas. What I meant to say was “Okay! What a good
learning experience. I will get a proper trowel now, thank you!’” What I actually said was “Haha, yeah oops” before skittering off to get a proper tool, all the while resisting the urge to fling
my treacherous trowel (and myself) into the ocean.
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| Some things change, some things never do |
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| Hamming it up in 2017 and 2022 |
I didn’t know it
then, but the weeks that followed ended up being some of the greatest moments
of my life. I returned from that trip absolutely hooked on historic archaeology. I had always been interested in it but now I knew
for certain it was something I wanted to study seriously – and study I did. My
friends still don’t quite understand what I do. Before leaving for a later dig,
one of them asked me to name any new rocks I found after her. I didn’t have the
heart to tell her that 1) Rocks are cool, but that’s not what I do and 2)
Bermuda only has one type of rock: limestone.
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Not a pipe stem, but still pretty cool -
early 17th-century Surrey Borderware |
I always explain to
friends patient enough to listen to my rambling that archaeology is closer to
time travel than to treasure hunting. For me, the thrill always comes from the
discovery of the mundane. When I find the broken stem of a clay pipe, I often
marvel that I am the first person to
hold it since it was discarded without a second thought by its owner (I always
imagine a grizzled, disgruntled whaler or dock worker). In that moment, the 300
years in between me and him vanish. It’s a feeling I never get tired of.
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| Researching in the Bermuda Archive |
When people ask me
“so, why archaeology?” I tell them it’s because it grounds me - no pun
intended. It reminds me I am a part of history, both as a student uncovering
the past and also as someone creating things for future archaeologists to study
as I live my life. It makes me feel proud of my work, an emotion I seldom allow
myself to enjoy. I am helping to fill in the gaps in history, finding things
out about people in the past who were forgotten or omitted. I’d even go so far
to say that archaeology helps me deal with my mortality. When digging, a peace
of mind settles over me that I cannot find anywhere else. Dr. Jarvis’s field
seasons are always the perfect mix of mentally, physically, and socially
demanding work.
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Some of the good friends
I made this summer.
Fellow supervisors (a.k.a “Big Kids”) Peyton and Hannah on
the
far left and right. I am in the center, flanked by
Number Whiz Jared and
Nerf Ace Skylar |
Fast forward to July
2022. I am about to turn twenty-four. Four years of undergrad, two years
working in the “real world,” and one pandemic later, I am back in Bermuda. It
is evening after a long hot day digging. A healthy (or at least thick) layer of
dirt covers everyone sitting at our picnic tables on Paget Island awaiting
dinner. The sky is pink and the crab grass is rough under my bare feet. There
is no WiFi, so we have to actually talk to each other. While we chat, I watch
two undergrad students at the end of the table watch a line of ants with rapt
attention. The conversation naturally turns to reminiscing after the dishes are
cleared and night falls. Not unkindly, Dr. Jarvis recalls how anxious I was on
my first field school and how he knew I had no reason to worry back then. After
being invited back to Smith’s Island, this time as a site supervisor, I believe
him.
If you’re like me, you often don’t realize how far
you’ve come in your life and abilities until someone trusts you to help them
with something important. I can now identify a posthole cut, keep track of
dozens of contexts with confidence, cook a mean chili for twelve, tie up our
workboat at dock (and even drive it!), scale heights without fear, and make
mistakes without falling to pieces - none of which I could do in 2017. I’ve
accomplished this with the help of the good friends and mentors I’ve worked
with during this project. Although I was back in the same place, I had come a
long way from that nervous eighteen-year-old with the oversized trowel. Now, as
I start my Master’s degree and continue my love affair with studying material
culture, I hope I continue to grow as a student and as a person – and return to
Smith’s Island to keep learning and digging and finding grizzled old sailors’
pipe stems.
Ewan is a University of Rochester alumnus currently pursuing an MA at
The New School for Social Research. He enjoys Red Stripe, pistachio ice cream,
and speaking in various weird voices to entertain himself and others on site.
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