Don’t Throw in the Trowel: My First Time on an Archaeological Excavation
The Discovery Programme’s Administrative Assistant, Katie Breen, recently participated in the Monastic Midlands research project: a collaboration between the Irish Archaeology Field School and the Institute for Field Research.
Here she describes her experience of participating in an excavation for the first time, at Clonoghil Castle, Birr, Co. Offaly.
When I bought my first 4” Marshalltown Pointing Trowel, slim like a cake slicer and entirely foreign to me, I called my Dad that night. “Are you going to be digging holes with that!”, he laughed at me. I told him that I was not but he turned out to know more about archaeology than I did.
Working for the Discovery Programme as an administrator for the last year-and-a-half, I was of course no stranger to archaeology. I was well acquainted with the archaeologists that would come through the door and I was used to listening to my colleagues chat about excavations over coffee, but I myself had never experienced one.
Studying History & English Literature at University College Dublin, I chose to take some classes in archaeology and classics in order to tick some boxes before the end of my final year. Dipping my feet into archaeology before saying I had a history degree just seemed like the right thing to do.
As electives, I took some classes by Prof Aidan O’Sullivan and Prof Meriel McClatchie from the archaeology department and Dr Jo Day from the classics department. I started to recognise the faces of my future colleagues; teaching tutorials and walking around the art history and archaeology departments.
I started to really like it, more than I thought I would. I came to look forward to those classes in the same way as, if not more than, the classes I was taking for my degree. With history and archaeology being sisters and not twins, there was something different about the energy, the faculty, the students, that I just couldn’t put my finger on.
During my gap year after my undergrad, my plans to get field experience were marred by going in and out of lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions. When I started my MA in Public History in 2022 I audited some classes in cultural heritage management and more archaeology, including Brendan O’Neill’s Material Culture module from UCD’s MSc in Experimental Archaeology. This was a module where, over a number of weeks, students produced stone adzes. Brendan probably saw my lack of knowledge (and acrylic nails) and did me a favour by giving me one that was most likely a student’s from a previous year to polish up. My perfect stone adze was a marvel to students after the first class.
After graduation I gained the position of Administrative Assistant with The Discovery Programme. Some of the team at the Irish Archaeology Field School are members of The Discovery Programme’s Board of Directors and they kindly invited me to participate in my first excavation at the Monastic Midlands research project as part of my Continuing Professional Development.
After an initial rocky start – joining the excavation during its second week meant I didn’t know how to access the site which led to me walking back-and-forth through waist-high grass, ducking under barbed wire, dodging cows that were curiously following me, and a comically timed rain shower – I found the site, the medieval Clonoghil Castle on the outskirts of Birr, Co. Offaly. I returned the following day to join the excavation. Directed by Dr Denis Shine and Dr Stephen Mandal, the Monastic Midlands research project arises from a longstanding relationship with Offaly County Council and several local communities in the Midlands. The project studies the landscape, earthworks, buildings, folklore, artefacts, and buried human remains of different anchor sites located around Birr, a charming town in Offaly.
Clonoghil Castle is one of three known medieval monuments in Birr. The excavation leaders estimate that the poorly preserved masonry remains of the site are of a medieval hallhouse, due to the stronger lower defensive walls of the structure.
Some parts of the field school I enjoyed more than others. I carried out elevation drawings on the north-east side of the structure where the ground falls away steeply on the southern bank of the Camcor River. I also participated in some photogrammetry and drone flying on a nearby site, which was something that I was particularly interested in learning more about given The Discovery Programme’s innovative approaches to survey and recording.
There were two trenches at the site – one across the south-eastern side where the bank/ditch are most obvious and another inside the interior of the structure. It was in this interior trench that I mostly worked, digging a sondage alongside an American biochemistry student named Will Zheng. It was in this sondage where, over a number of days, I trowelled countless amounts of soil into my face and was bitten by countless bugs. On the second day I did start to use the bug spray that my CEO had suggested I buy but by that time it was too late.
There were a few key takeaways from the excavation. I had always been under the impression that archaeological and historical fields attracted eccentric people – but it turns out there’s no-one else I would rather spend 6 hours a day digging with! I will also never be able to forget the sound of the many times I accidentally trowelled over a rock. Perhaps the biggest surprise from this experience was that my Dad was right with his teasing – I did “dig holes” (well, a sondage!) with the trowel and it wasn’t just for removing some topsoil or picking some dirt from some mortar like I previously thought. However, I stuck by it and not once did I think about throwing in the trowel.
Special thanks to Dr Stephen Mandal, Dr Denis Shine, Richard Reid, Dan O’Meara and all associated staff from the Irish Archaeology Field School for a great experience.
