18
Every fresh dig at the Castle began with the
archaeologists telling me they didn't expect to
find anything, and every time I fell for it...
As many of the team have mentioned, the
sarcophagus has featured in their best and
worst moments. My recollection is that it
went on for months: finding the Saxon church, later the sarcophagus, carrying on digging
to a depth of 5m where Roman town houses were found, gaining permission to extract
the sarcophagus, working out how to get it out, the weather changing making the ground
heavy with water - just what we didn't want. The day itself was long and bitterly cold, my
job to do the media interviews so that the archaeologists could work on uninterrupted
- the first was just before 7am. The archaeologists and Woodheads worked together,
buoyed up by adrenaline and team spirit; my photographer and the two film crews
jostling for the best positions, with absolutely no team spirit at all! County Archaeologist
Beryl and I lurking with intent, we probably shouldn't have been there but we just
couldn't tear ourselves away. The 3m deep pit was very confined and all the specialists
and cameramen had to wait their turn to descend and do their bit. The work went on
well into the evening - everyone completely exhausted. Very first thing next morning
I got a call to do yet another interview - "had we discovered anything new since last
night?" Really? No!! I think I managed to come up with something politic - my Director
who doesn't think diplomacy is my thing should have been very proud!
However, sometimes the small things can be just as appealing. Archaeologist Cecily Spall
would often photograph finds on her phone and send through to a small, appreciative
group of us. One notable day a picture arrived of a £1 coin for scale and a tiny dice.
Ten minutes later the same picture but with two dice and so on throughout the day the
pictures came in until we had seven 12th century dice made of bone and horn, so small
that all seven could fit on that pound coin. They are still my favourite find; I'm not sure if
it is their ordinariness or their delightful smallness or whether they speak of their owner
that appeals so much, but appeal they do.
Common knowledge to archaeologists, but I don't think I had appreciated how everyone
literally plonks their additions on top of the previous; so creating a Roman, Saxon,
Norman, medieval and so on layer cake - we are the beneficiaries in terms of building
up a picture of what would have been, but am I right in seeing a level of contempt for
what had gone before? I have a vision of William the Conqueror seeing that tiny Saxon
church, and building his Castle on top of it and saying "I'm going to show you how to
build a church" and in Lincoln Cathedral, boy, did he!
Revealing
layers
Top right, 12th century dice; right, lid of the Saxon sarcophagus; below, the skeleton
and sarcophagus at the excavation site