Guest Blogger Ewan Shannon - “So, why archaeology?” How SIAP helped me “dig deep”

 

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.


Ewan helping Katrina take
the perfect opening context photo


 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 soil

Just 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.

Some things change, some things never do
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.  

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.


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.


 
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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