A small tour around our Grabungshaus. Where and how do we live during the campaign.
Did you ever wonder where archaeologists are living during a campaign abroad? Well, today I will show you our home for the duration of the campaign: the “Grabungshaus” or excavation-house.
Because we knew that this project would be a long-term project and based on our experience up until that point, we started building an actual house belonging to the project in 2015. In order to accommodate the whole team during a campaign, it had to be quite big (and its still very crowded some times!).
All in all we have 14 different rooms for our team of which 11 have two the other four beds included. At the moment of course this allows us to spread the whole team across the house with 1 person per room. These rooms are split onto two different floors which are mainly used as sleeping floors. Of course, we have showers and loads of bathrooms too! Always needed after a messy day in the field. An added bonus: everybody gets their personal balcony!
However, it doesn’t stop there. On the ground floor we have our depot and find processing areas. Here all the finds made in the field will be worked on and stored. Our restoration team is also at work here. Furthermore, we have a nice court/garden area right next to the entrance, which allows for some leisure and shade during hot days.
Further common areas are the workroom on the 1st floor and the kitchen and dining room on the 2nd floor. The workroom allows for plenty of space to do some research, work with the database or finish a homework left over from last semester. The dining room is where we will eat together during breakfast and dinner. For lunch, we stay in the different areas where we work, so that we don’t have to drive back to the house every time and lose valuable hours.
One of our favourites is of course our big roof terrace. Here we spent the evenings when the sun has cooled down, talk, have an after-work beer, play chess and generally just have a good time! We also have our weekly meetings here, where we discuss the different projects, what has happened during the last days and what our plans for the weekend are. It does help that you have a nice view from here! Fun fact: one can see both our working areas on the neighbouring hills from here.
So now that you know how we live, tell us what you think! Next time we will have a look at the different projects we are working on here and a more in depth look into our work as an archaeologist. Stay tuned!
by Fynn Riepe
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