A meditation on excavation

I spent much of 2018 working with the archaeologists of Rubicon Heritage (an archaeological consultancy) on a road scheme for Transport Infrastructure Ireland (a government body). We were tasked with resolving the archaeology along a section of a new road bypass around the West Cork town of Macroom.

I worked as a member of a team excavating in all weathers and temperatures ranging from -5 to +35 degrees centigrade (according to my phone), in all weathers, particularly rain and then snow, then a heatwave through the summer. I enjoyed the experience of working the land physically digging in all conditions and found that my creative response, making notes and photographs in my spare time, concentrated on this physicality as a connection to land, as a way of understanding it deeply. A kind of exhausting embodiment.