diggingthedirt.com

We’ve all seen them, the circuit archaeologist. Usually found propping up the bar of the cheapest boozer in town… Viz vest, standard issue mud caked boots and of course, the obligatory WHS trowel, stuck handle down in back pocket, primed and ready for inaction.

Thrown together for a few months in the arse end of nowhere, they make close friends and closer enemies, only to be moved again to opposite sides of the galaxy. If this is you then welcome home. Run by diggers for diggers, this site is an answer to the diaspora of Irish, British and World archaeologists scattered to the four corners of the wind. This is your chance to keep in touch with what’s hot and what’s not – this seasons latest look on site, step by step guides to intricate troweling techniques, the highlights of the social calendar, where to be seen and who to be seen with, and celebrity archaeologist gossip.

If you’ve never met an archaeologist before and your just stumbling, then let us explain. Get one archaeologist by him or herself and they’ll happily talk archaeology all day. They’ll tell you how much they enjoy their job, how they love working outside and anything else they can think of which makes their job sound more interesting than your boring (but well paid and dry) office job.

Two archaeologists, and they’ll still talk shop, only this time it will all be about how crap the pay is and how terrible the conditions. They’ll talk about how shite the site is, which ejit’s digging which feature wrong, how the project manager doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, how the site they were working on before was so much better, and last but by no means least, they’ll talk about who’s shagging who, or who’s not shagging who, or who wants to shag who, or who’s shagging who behind who’s back. Because in the archaeological gossip stakes, sex is good but incest is best, and you’ve just stumbled into one of the most incestuous careers on earth.

Any more than two archaeologists, well that officially qualifies as a party, and that’s where diggingthedirt comes in. Earth-shaking parties and salacious gossip. Think of it as a decompression chamber for societies excluded. A shock-horror expose of the seedy underbelly the archaeological profession hoped you’d never see.

The Site Diary?  Well that belongs to me: it’s my personal online therapy. Sweeping statements, knee-jerk reactions and wild gesticulations, chucked lazily on the spoil heap of cyberspace.

The Finds Tray?  Well that belongs to you. No really, it does. Most of the stuff here I’ve robbed so check your pockets. Photos, films, bits and bobs. It’s just that I approach the tinterweb with the same childlike wonder as when I’m out in the field. It’s like when you find things so exciting the whole world needs to know about it right there and then – an amazing artefact, an enigmatic structure, or a mushroom shaped like a bum.

As for the end of site party…  Archaeology’s just something I do. I’m really a DJ. One foot in the past, the other foot in the pub, and the less said about that the better.

And when the hangover’s settled …Post-ex and publication.  Or WTF just happened? Click here to download the latest news on what’s hot and what’s not, circa 5000 BC.

Thanks to Jonski for lending me his trowel. And his beard. And his bottle. And his cigs. And ideas, and photos and, that time he doesn’t know about when he passed out on our sofa, his car. Thanks also to Ted for the design and layout. ‘If we build it, they will come’, I might have said one night in the pub, and by ‘we’ I meant ‘them’, and by ‘they’ I mean ‘you’.

So welcome to the site and who knows what might happen: when you dig up the past, all you find is dirt…

brendon@diggingthedirt.com