Dogodivščine na nizki zemlji

One early November morning I set out to the south of the country, to the province of Noord-Brabant (North Brabant), to a small place called Best. Though I believe the west is the best, this time the best place was in the south. :)
The reason why I decided to venture on such a long journey - the distance was also THE reason why none of the housemates joind me, next to the reason that some of them had to work - anyway, the reason was the open day at an archeological site where my housemate Ron has been working for the past three months.
It's not that I'm suddenly all into history and archeology. Not at all. I just thought a day away would do me good. Besides, I wanted to make a full report of the site for my archeological sister.



My housemates warned me that the trip there takes rather long. Also, I checked the train website and it was in fact supposed to take me more than two hours. But also that didn't sound that long to me. I simply stocked myself with books and had huge plans how I was going to study on the train. In the end, the trip passed so quickly I was only able to read a couple of pages. You have to keep in mind that you have to change trains, read free train newspapers to keep updated and look out the window to observe how and if the south differs from our Randstad (a horseshoe-shaped conurbation of big cities - Rotterdam, Den Haag, Leiden, Amsterdam, Utrecht).

So the trip went well. I was there in no time.

Then I expected bad weather. According to weather forecast and my housemate it was supposed to be pouring rain. Besides, Ron sent me a message the night before suggesting I should take some spare shoes or even boots with me because the site was very muddy. That was a very smart gesture! I would have never thought of that myself. So I packed spare trainers - I have no boots or sturdy walking shoes here and to be honest I was to lazy to go buy some rubber boots the next day - and even some spare clothes. You never know with them archeologists, hahaha.

But again, the weather turned out just fine. Even more so. When I finally arrived to the site, it was sunny and warm and I so much enjoyed being outside in the fresh air all afternoon long.
Still, the site was in fact very muddy so extra shoes came in very handy. I think I was the only one not wearing boots or any kind of other rubber shoes. That was one of the first things I noticed when I arrived at the site.






When I arrived at the site, I called Ron to meet him but he seemed to be working at some other location so he suggested I joined the 'official' guided tour of the site. Every hour another tour started. I arrived just in time for the next one.













We gathered in one of those temporary sheds and first listened to the 'boss' of the excavation site how he explained a bit about the site as a whole and gave some general information.
Then, still in the shed, an archeologist-botanist explained how she found burnt barley seeds, which helped her define what people ate at that time. She also said that she had never before found such a big amount of seeds. Then she added that luckily the people in the past also burnt their food once in a while, so the seeds did not decay but kept their shape instead, which is great for us to be able to recognize them. Good that she explained that because I thought that everything organic simply rotted away and became a part of the soil, but apparently it didn't.















We were then 'handed over' to another archeologist who took us around and showed us actual finds on the site. He was a very funny and charming guy and I liked the way he explained things because I could actually understand what he was saying. And with that I don't mean I didn't understand his Dutch but that the archeological stuff actually made sense they why he said it. Anyway ...

This first thing he showed us was a huge pit that probably was a water pit since even now, when they left if open for a while, water had gathered and stayed there. By the way, this was also the place where they had found most of pottery on the site.
How did they define that it was man-made and not natural, you will probably ask. I did too. As I always do. Well, they look at the shape - that in this case was not natural at all - and how the colours of the layers differ. Later, Ron explained to me once again, well yeah, mostly we just look for colours, hahaha.



So, in the photo you can see how the layers decline from the outside to the inside. Now, you shouldn't mistake that small quadrant for the pit. No, no, no. That's just how archeologists work. They hadn't dug up everything, just three quadrants so you can get a three-dimensional image of the pit. The pit was much bigger.








The next stop was at the site where they found traces of two farmhouses. Again, they looked for difference in colour. Where there once was a hole for a pole, the colour was different. You have to imagine: first there was a hole and a pole, then the pole rotted away and the soil/sand filled that hole. And so they marked down where the soil differed from the rest of the soil (that is, where the holes were) and when they collected and connected all those points, they could come up with this reconstruction - this is how the farmhouse probably looked like.









However, I said there were two of them. Actually, there were three but they had already filled up the third one by the time of the open day.
Anyway, the second farmhouse (in the photo behind the first one, the one with small poles to indicate where the original poles must have been) probably came around 200 years after the first one but - the funniest thing - was situated next to the first one and exactly in the same direction (west-east) as the first one. Pretty cool, huh? :)
That would mean that the people back then knew there once had existed a farmhouse in that place. Or was this just sheer coincidence? Hm ... Besides, both farmhouses showed some similarities in the style of building, our witty tour guy explained.






After about an hour, we were done with the official tour. Then Ron took over. :) He took me to the parts of the site where he worked and showed me the latest finds that he and his team had found - another farmhouse and some kind of storage space/building where grain was probably kept. Go, Ronnie!


(By the way, it was exactly at this very hole that he said that his job was to look for colours, hahaha.)














The open day activities were well-organized and it was an interesting experience. I really enjoyed myself. And as I've said before, it was a lovely day.

This still-life with a wheelbarrow witnesses of the calming effect this site had on me. Hahahaha! I've been reading to many books on landscape painting. Oh no, wait, I should be doing that. I'm supposed to write my thesis on it. :)

Besides, a wheelbarrow is yet another word that Ron asked me to teach him in Slovene. This time it wasn't at an abnormal hour. If you haven't heard about this before: It was already a while ago. One morning at 8 am when I came to the kitchen after having just got up - and not yet woken up - that Ron asked me how we say a mole in Slovenian. Go figure! This story always makes me laugh.


This is how our Slovenian lessons began. Samokolnica (wheelbarrow) is just one of most random words he wants me to teach him. Štiharica (spade) is one of them particular words, hahaha.



So, for the end, a still-life with a samokolnica and my one and only personal tour guide with a štiharica. Lovely!