Loading…
18
A burst pipe flooded our dig site and ruined a week of careful work
Last month we were exposing a Roman mosaic floor near Bath, England. A contractor hit a water main about 30 feet from our trench and the mud just poured in before anyone could grab the tarps. We spent two days pumping out sludge and re-cleaning the surface, but the damage to the exposed tesserae was done. The site supervisor just shrugged and said 'that's archaeology for you,' which made me want to scream. Has anyone else had a total disaster like this ruin their excavation plans, and how did you keep morale up?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
angela89022d ago
...and honestly that story about the water main hit close to home because I remember reading about a dig in York where the same thing happened, except their trench was right next to a Victorian sewer line that burst. They lost an entire week of stratigraphy, not just cleaning up the mess but the slurry got into every little crack between the stones. It took them months to get the moisture out of the soil samples they'd already bagged, and that's the part people don't think about, the paperwork and lab stuff that's ruined too. But I also heard the team turned it into a kind of bonding thing, they started doing pub quizzes every night about Roman plumbing, of all things, and it made the whole collapse feel less like a failure and more like a weird story they'd tell later. Maybe that sounds dumb but sometimes you just need to laugh at the universe throwing mud at you.
6