finished in the nick of time!

Finished editing my essay. horray. i enjoyed this one more than the last - which probably means i will get rubbish marks!!

anyway ive realised i work in a very chaotic manner. just look at the state of my study!!

i think im gonna go have nice well earned cider!!

A Sad Loss

I Learned today that Geoff Egan has died. he was without a doubt the person who made me decide to get into archaeology after I was lent a copy of his book "Medieval Houshold" which is a detailed look into the many incredible medieval finds from london. My medieval bible for many years has been "Dress Accessories" also focusing on medieval finds.

he is one person I had hoped to one day work with.

So long Geoff!

a tribute can be found here.

http://independent.academia.edu/paulcourtney/Blog/6572/Geoff-Egan-PhD-FSA--an-appreciation-

Almost done

well the essay is due Saturday, and despite thinking I would utilise the Christmas break to do some work, I think I failed quite massively on that front. no matter as the reading I have done seems to be seeing me through nicely and my essay is coming together how I wanted it to! which is a relief more than anything else. Ive read more than i thought and if I use most of what Ive noted I have healthy bibliography
one thing that does concern me though is my time keeping. I really struggle to get home after a long day at work and sit down to reading or typing. from working in administration for the last 8 years I know that my peak concentration occurs in the morning and after lunch, so by 5pm I'm just knackered, especially after cycling home. although I have been surprised to find my insomnia that I used to *suffer* from in my teens making a reappearance (I say 'suffer' lightly as Ive never really been bothered by it and can function quite normally on only a few hours kip!)
what I really want is to reduce my hours at work, but owing to the current government overhaul of the NHS, this would be a really silly move!! So playing the lotto I feel is my best course!! I did win £8 the other day so I'm bound to improve!! really!!

I'm sure at some point this blog will begin to become more technical in the pursuit of Archaeology rather than just a forum to vent my ramblings and frustrations. Ive just not got there yet!!

Were looking at Romans this weekend. doesnt really peak my interest all that much after many years of Roman Life and Latin classes but ive been surprised all along so far so i'm hoping for an other interesting lecture, which might quash some of the conceptions I have on Roman Britain! we will see!!

Books have arrived !! no excuses now!!

frustrating block

I have been waiting ages for a couple of books to arrive that have been delayed by snow. Hopefully they will come tomorrow as they are definitely in our local depot!
Frustrating yes but not the end of the world, except that I seem to have used their absence as an excuse to slow right down reading up for my next essay, which is just very lazy of me and incredibly frustrating. But ive made a pact now with myself that the time off I have over Christmas will be dedicated to sitting down nice and warm and studying. So apart from a couple of family visits my time is my own. Just feel for significant other, whom I am somewhat neglecting at the moment! It will sort itself out im sure!
For some more inspiring reads, I have relished in the snow cover we have had in the area recently because it has highlighted a norman motte+bailey castle I had long known about in the area but not seen due to the location being on private land surrounded by trees, but in the snow covered world the obvious mound earthworks show out on the landscape from the significant others workplace. So he took me down for a look the other day- didn’t get any photos – mores the pity but felt happier for seeing the earthworks.
So apart from all the reading im doing and the essay which is coming together, my next plan is to go and look at a site ive chosen to feature in an interpretive exercise as part of the course. This Site is the Iron Age Hill Fort at Cadbury Congresbury, a place that I grew up on, quite literally as my parents house is about a 5 min walk away, you can see the woodland that encloses the site from their house! Im really looking forward to this visit and will probably do it on boxing day when we visit home.
So that’s it for me for now. Im going to get on and read now. I promise!!

Learning

Starting a part time degree in archaeology at 26years old leaves me incredibly frustrated. Why did I not do this earlier? I could have so easily been somewhere different by now; instead I have 6 years of part time study to complete before I’m even a fraction of the way there to be seen as a serious archaeologist. All I know is I truly want to get there and am enjoying the beginning of the road so far.
To tell you the truth I’m probably doing everyone’s head in that I know because all I can talk about, and indeed think about is the past and my own discovery of its existence. I seem to have an incredible thirst for knowledge and I just hope it carries me through my studies and those long cold days in the field searching for all and nothing. For now I’m excited, I’m noticing a world around me that before seemed so small, so modern open up and widen in distance and time. This surprises me as for the longest time I had thought I knew history, but I was blinkered. Unfortunately this is partly due to historical re-enactments. I am a member of a medieval group specialising in the late 14th Century, and while I can probably talk for England on medieval social history and for the most part the material culture I feel my focus has been set too specifically in one place and I had forgotten everything that had inspired me in school. Sometimes I see the re-enactments I’ve done as a hindrance and can see the failings all the more clearly where we have failed in telling the story of medieval society. But I can also see the good in what we do too – those of us who experiment with our equipment trying our hardest to reconstruct things accurately, or try to learn old crafts or cook historical recipes have all experienced an element of the past and sometimes the reactions we give are in many ways the same as those we are trying to emulate. I will never forget the joy and surprise I experienced watching 2 doves fly out of a Grete Pye as part of a medieval banquet or the subtleties served to us in the form of a magnificent beast filled with jewels, ridden by its own armoured chicken. Bizarre? It was but that night I felt the closest I had ever been to the medieval mind, and perhaps I would ever be.
But now my eyes have been opened and as it should be we start at the beginning and this year we have been going through the chronology of human existence starting with the Palaeolithic some 2.5 million years ago, we’ve only got to the end of the iron age but I feel as if I have learned more about my past in a few weekends than I had been taught in the last 26 years of my life. Now I cannot go anywhere without looking around me taking in the landscape around me and getting far too excited about bumps in the ground!
And what of my medieval adventures? For now I will try to continue them, perhaps with a better knowledge of what we should be showing to the people that visit us. but I now have a really good excuse to push out into the realms of experimental archaeology and try my hand at medieval farming or go on a pilgrimage or even become lady of the manor, so if you ever see a lady wandering around the British countryside in a medieval cotehardie and hood, wave hello it could be me!