On the following Saturday the weather was
not so kind to us. In fact,
conditions in the afternoon were pretty atrocious with rain, wind – even hail
at one point. Our fingers got so
numb and the pens so damp we could barely label up the finds bags.
We were getting close to finishing the
day and feeling somewhat demoralised when a shout went up from a group walking
the far edge of the field.
They were calling for Howard.
I relayed the message and carried on walking my section. I glanced up once and remarked to the
other people in my group, ‘Well, they’re not jumping up and down – it can’t be
that good.’ The next time I
glanced over, someone was jumping up and down.
I arrived at the group and they split apart
to reveal something lying on the surface of the soil. Unmistakable even to a novice like me – a flint axe
head. I flung an arm around Nat,
splattering his coat with mud and congratulated him on his discovery.
Unable to resist any more, I picked the axe
up as more excited voices joined us.
Someone turned to Howard and asked the question ‘How old do you think it
is?’ ‘Could be up to 10,000 years
old’, he replied.
There was a moment of silence as we gazed
at the object sitting in my hand. Faceted,
carefully worked for a purpose. An
invisible thread connecting one human being to another, compressing time.
I passed it on and looked around. We were all grinning.
Eventually we turned to leave, still
smiling, still exclaiming, cold, damp and discomfort forgotten. Nat turned to me. ‘Archaeology is
cool’, he said. Couldn’t agree
more.
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