Word: digging
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DIGGERS WERE THE GUTS of the operation. Without their willingness to sacrifice, without what Martin Biddle bluntly called "a conviction that the dig is more important than their personal comfort or desires," nothing would have been accomplished. Several factors accounted for the generally cheerful complicity of the diggers, who were, in some senses, being exploited. The atmosphere of community was the strongest cohesive force. Diggers lived, ate, worked and relaxed together. Privacy was a rare commodity. The ratio of men to women was even, and the social life was another persuasive communal force. As one site supervisor remarked. "They...
...best measure of the project's success is an impressive fund of new knowledge contributed to a comparatively new emphasis in the study of antiquity, that of the more anthropologically oriented socio-urban archeology. In most respects, the dig is the most significant in British archeology at the present time...
BEGUN IN 1961, the dig completed its twelfth and final season last year. The scope of its archeological focus was remarkable. Every season, under the tireless direction of Martin Biddle, who is widely acknowledged as Britain's foremost archeologist and highly esteemed on the Continent as well, the project examined four or five sites in which a variety of structural features dating from up to five distinct periods of settlement were stratified. The large number of sites required an annual average labor force of 200 volunteers and trained supervisors, an unusually large number...
...Duke University changed the character of the project from an exclusively British one to an international one. American assistance, though variable, represented, at its height, 40 per cent of the budget. After 1967, the majority of the diggers were Americans, who could afford to spend $500-$600 to dig in dirt and rubbish for a summer. The widened scope attracted increased British and European attention, and it became customary for up to 20 nationalities to be represented each season. In recognition of its success, one of the Duke of Edinburgh's awards for International Cooperation was presented to the excavation...
...chalk downs above Itchen and watch the sun set (or rise). Pleasures were few and primitive--cigarettes and cider were the staples of digger life. Romance was always available, although usually tenuous, but a handful of digger marriages, generally between male site supervisors and female diggers, have graced the dig's past...