Well, the end of the first term has come and gone. It was remarkably fast, but overall I feel really, really good about it. I got some really good feedback about my essay for my cultural heritage management class, and going into the summative essays I felt very confident that I could rock them.
I don't know if I've explained before, but the archaeology department does grading and feedback in a very different manner from American universities. Around week 4, you turn in a formative essay, which is 'graded' and returned with lots of feedback, and you meet with your professors (or tutors as they're sometimes called), to talk about what you did right, what you did wrong, and what you need to change to do better on the summative essay. Formative essays, though, don't actually count toward your final grade. It's just practice. Which is nice, especially when you are coming to a whole new field as I am. The thing about good writing is knowing your audience, and what they're looking for. History writing and archaeology writing are actually two very different beasts. A lot of the conventions found in archaeology writing I would consider lazy writing in history, but it's really all about what you're used to seeing. So as you can imagine, there was a bit of a ... learning curve when it came to my essay for buildings archaeology. But now that I've got the conventions down, I think I'll do much better on my summative essay.

Which is the whole point, of course. Our summative essays count for 10% of our master's grade, which can seem intimidating, but to be honest, I didn't even think about it. If you get caught up in worrying about grades and making every single word perfect, you'll never write anything. So I just sit down to write the best essay I can, don't really worry about grades at all, and focus instead on what the class is about and how I can best exemplify that in my writing. (And it's worked pretty well, so far.)

So yesterday, essays were due at 12, and we hit the pubs at 12:30. It was really nice to see everyone not totally stressed out by school, and to chat and catch up with people you had assumed were missing or dead. We didn't end up leaving the pub until at 7, and we made our way to Constantine House where we mulled some wine and popped in A Muppet Christmas Carol. It was utterly lovely.

Tomorrow, my floormate Mimi and I are going down to London for about 5 days, where we will be touristy and ridiculous and I cannot wait. The most exciting part is that we're going to St. Paul's for evensong (at 3:15...explain that one to me) and then! then! We're going to Stick and Bowl for Chinese that I've been dying for since I left this wondrous land almost 3 years ago now. (And yes, I double checked to make sure they still exist. They do.) After Chinese we're going to pop into the pub where I spend an inordinate amount of time as a young, fresh faced undergrad living in a world not my own. It will be nice to go back.

I probably won't have a chance to update before the holidays begin, so let me just take a second to wish you all a very merry, happy, peaceful non-denominational winter holiday! Even though I'm so far away from you all, I think of you constantly, and am very blessed to have you in my life.
xoxox

You're a Buildings What?

Church At Crambe

I thought that I would try and explain what, exactly, I do as a Buildings Archaeologist. (That title is slowly growing on me, I must admit.) When I first came to York, even I didn't know what exactly I'd be doing, but now that I have a better grasp on things, here's a quick and dirty introduction to my course.

Buildings archaeology uses many different sources to understand a building; they don't just rely on the fabric of a building to tell the whole story. Documentary evidence is an important part of tracing a building's history and use, but an archaeological record is also necessary. Last week with my Building Surveying group, we went to Crambe, a tiny little village 30 minutes from York. The center of the village is this church, which upon first glance is easily read, but the longer you look at this building, the less it makes sense. I've drawn arrows to some of the more interesting points of the building.

1) The stone here is of two different colours. This could just be due to weathering, but it may also be a later addition or repair.

2)The window tracery (the mullions, or bars, holding the glass in place) is know as "Perpendicular" style, which gives an approximate date of the 15th century for the tower.

3) Evidence of a change in roof pitch, after the tower was added.

4+5) It's hard to tell from this picture, but the section of the wall with arrow 5 has been inset from the rest of the wall of the church. Also notice that the coursing of the brick is much more even than it is lower down the wall, except where it's broken by the grotesque (#4).

6)An early window--quite small and lancet shaped would indicate that this section of the was probably built around the 12th century. But the stone used is *not* 12th century--it's probably a 19th century restoration (as see by the 'newness' of the stone, and regular chisel marks, which you can't see on this picture).

So what we can see from this section alone is that there were multiple building phases on this building--12th century style windows, 15th century tower, possible later additions and Victorian restorations. But there's also a lot of the building that doesn't make sense. Why is that grotesque in the middle of the wall? It looks flat on top--as if a roof were supposed to rest on it. But was the roof of this church ever that low?

And why is that section of the wall inset? Why does the coursing look so regular compared to the rest of the wall?

If we look at the rest of the wall, it gets more interesting:

7)Why on earth is there this course of large stones so high up on the wall? Is this a hint at a previous (lower) roof line? But why didn't the builders use smaller stones?

8)It's clear that this roof has been replaced relatively recently, but these dentils on the overhang were actually the frame of the roof--and would have exerted enormous pressure on the walls below. In the earlier roof, there were no crossbeams providing extra support--the walls were really bearing the load of the roof.

9) This window is even earlier than 12th century. It could be Norman (so 11th century) but the hoodstone appears to have a Saxon carving on it, making it 10th century or eariler!

10) But right next to the Saxon window is a Gothic style window, with stained glass that is Victorian. Hmmmm.

11)The south door of this church has been bricked in, but you can still see the lintel.

So just along one wall, we have tonnes of questions! How old is this church, really? Does it have Saxon beginnings, but was continuously added on as the village grew and became richer? When was the roof raised? How many times was it raised? Why did the church lose its south door? Did people stop using it? (One theory we have for that is that the orientation of the village gradually shifted, and people exclusively used the west door, so there was no need for a south door).

And the ultimate question is how much of this wall is original, and how much of it is a Victorian restoration. It looks like a hodgepodge of styles, and continual expansion, but I think there was actually a lot of rebuilding of original fabric, as well. As I mentioned, the (quite heavy) roof was supported almost entire by the walls, which eventually bowed out with time. I think that as part of their restoration scheme (including replacing the windows and adding the chancery at the east end) the Victorians may have rebuilt the inset section of the nave, and that strange grotesque was their own particular decoration flourish. It might have come from the original church, or from somewhere else (there's a ruined abbey quite close by, and much of the stone had previously been...liberated for this church).

So as you can see, from just a visual survey we can gain a lot of information about a building. And remember, this is only one wall! The north wall has some interesting, politically charged graffiti, and stones that might have come from a Roman building, now unknown.

Hopefully as we survey the building more fully, and reference documentary evidence, we'll finally start to understand just what the heck is going on here. From there, we can make more informed decisions about how the town wants to conserve and manage the building. Does the roof need to have additional support (we can see that it's already had a detrimental effect in the past), should we be concerned with the way these different stone types might weather next to each other? Are there any stone in particular that should be monitored or examined in greater detail?

So there. That's what I do. It's pretty awesome.

Harrogate Trail

Sorry once again about the lack of blogging. It's Formative essay week here in the Archaeology department, so everyone is furiously writing papers and haunting the Key Texts section of the library, waiting to pounce on the books as they come back in four hour shifts.

I had the majority of my papers done before the weekend, but I'm stuck on the conclusion for one, and wrestling with a new and unfamiliar referencing style which is wreaking havoc with my word count. Alas. These papers don't even count toward our final grades, but they do give us a chance to see what our professors are expecting of us, and I really want to do well on them.

The reason I was such a 'swot' (as one fellow hiker termed me), was because there was yet another hike that I went on this weekend, and I wanted to get my papers done before hand. This was my third such hike, so I had to formally become a member of the Ramblers Society. Isn't that great?? I'm a bona fide Rambler now!

We did the first half of the Harrogate trail this weekend. It was 11 miles, through mud and grass, and I loved it.so.much. It was absolutely pouring when we started, and it wasn't until after lunch that it stopped raining. I was wearing waterproof-ish stuff, so I started reasonably dry, but my bag got pretty wet. And of course, we were hiking through fields and stuff, so I had mud up to my knees by the end of the day. I'm pretty sure that, had I attempted to go to the pub with the rest of the group instead of catching the train, I would have had to sit outside. We were all that muddy, though, and only one person fell! Talk about impressive.

The highlight of the day was definitely lunch time. We went to a ruined castle, and because it was still raining, we all huddled in the window alcoves lining the great hall, or camped in the fireplace. It was pretty great. The surrounding area had lots of exposed rock features, and some ambitious aristocrat decided it would be a great idea to use one of the larger rocks as one of the walls of this castle. I mean, why not? It saves you the trouble of moving a bunch of stones and mortaring them together into a structurally sound wall, right? And then, to get even more ambitious, he added a second level to his hall, using this large rock as the base of that. Pretty impressive, I think.

So Saturday was Guy Fawkes night, but I was pretty exhausted. At first we had planned on going out, but come nine o'clock, I was knackered so I...listened to the fireworks instead of going out to see them. Lame, I know.

And next weekend is the second half of this trail. I'll get a badge for completing both parts! I'm really excited about that!

(But now I have to return to my paper writing. Tonight, I swear I'll upload some photos. Cross my heart.)

Roseberry Topping

Last Saturday, I went on a hike with the a branch of the Ramblers club called Get Your Boots On. Basically, GYBO (Gi-boo) is Ramblers Lite. Well, not in the sense of easier hikes, but definitely the children's table of the Ramblers club. (And by 'children's table' I mean 20-30 somethings. We were the youngest there, I think.) We went to North Yorkshire, and the first accomplishment of the day was me successfully guiding my two companions through public transportation all the way up there. It took us about 2 1/2 hours to get there, and we took two trains and a bus. But by golly, I was rambling come hell or high water.

The hike was 11 miles, rated 'moderate', and led by a very nice woman named Louise. I'd like to spend a minute, dear internet, lamenting the term 'moderate'. This hike was many things: beautiful, breath taking, exciting, but not moderate. Turns out that the ratings are rather subjective, and each hike leader rates it themselves. By the end of the hike, Louise turned to me and said, "Well, now that I've done it again, I suppose it was really on the harder side of moderate."

No kidding. We started with a hike up the side of a hill, which brought us to the ridge we would be hiking across for most of the day. From that angle, Roseberry Topping (our ultimate goal) seemed quite imposing. Haha! little did I know that we had quite a round about route to go before we would tackle the topping from the other side. Instead, we skirted around the topping, across some pastures, and, down and up, over to Captain Cook's Monument, where we stopped and had lunch.

View from up on high

Lunch!

From there, we made our way across the moors. It was quite windy, and you could hear the wind sweeping through the heather, just like in The Secret Garden. Growing up, hearing stories set on the moors, I could never understand how a place full of plants and animals could be described so starkly, so lonely and cold. But walking up there, seeing nothing but heather for miles, seeing no one but our group of hikers, hearing nothing but the wind, it all made perfect sense.

I loved it.

A view across the moors

After a long walk across the moors, we suddenly (and quite unexpectedly) popped out on top of Highcliffe Nab, which had great views across to the North Sea.

Then we wandered down, through a forest, and up to Hanging Stone, a punishing climb up, and the back down. From Hanging Stone, we could see Roseberry Topping, seemingly miles away, looming ahead and taunting us. (In reality, I think it was about two miles away, if that.)

But we pressed on! I should pause and mention that Louise and the others were great to talk to and really good sports about letting us take our time up the steep bits. Some people were in really great condition and bounded along the moors like mountain goats. And some people walked a little more sedately, and took their time going up and down. So we always had company, or some one's heels to lock our eyes to when the ups seemed a little too daunting.

Roseberry topping (and much of the walk) was paved with what I can only describe as a cobblestone street that's barely survived an earthquake, then shaken out and tacked on the side of a mountain. Switch backs? The Brits don't need no stinkin' switchbacks! They just go straight up the sides of mountains, clambering over rocks specifically laid out in a pattern optimised to be as unhelpful as possible.

And then coming down, those rocks aren't wide enough to be stairs, so you feel like only mountain goats could get down without breaking an ankle.

We made it! (Becca, Beth and Brie. No, seriously. I am doomed to be in a trio of Bs)

And then I managed to finagle rides for us back to York, which was so appreciated. I think we could not have managed public transportation. Brie and I went with Louise, and in fact, I'll be driving with her on Sunday down to Roche Abbey for a second attempt at this Rambling thing.

I just absolutely love it. All the people are really nice (we had a GYBO pub night on Wednesday), and it's really fun to talk to people from across Yorkshire. I also just love walking and hiking, and the views are so extraordinary, I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut. I really am falling in love with Yorkshire, and I can't wait to show my parents when they come out in March!

I have several more pictures, so if you're interested in seeing them, let me know! I'll try to post them on Picasa or facebook, for all to see.

-b

York Minster and the City Walls

The thing about travel blogs is that it's hard to find a balance between doing all the cool stuff you want to blog about, and actually, well, blogging about it.

I guess that's my way of apologising for the lack of posts. But here we are.

For the last two weeks, I've been doing an awful lot to set up my life here in York. I got a cell phone (another sign that the Apocalypse is fast approaching), got a bank account, toured the main campus and library, and walked my feet off. Seriously. There were some days when we'd leave the house at 10 and walk and walk and walk until 4 or 5.

And then there are the pubs. So many pubs. I've been to at least nine that I can name (so far) and I'm assured by the locals that I could go to a different pub every night of the year. Not that I'll be able to do so after classes start on Tuesday, but at least the option is there, right?

I've also seen a lot of York. Last week, we went to York Minster and got a tour of the place. The Minster is a pretty amazing place, in large part due to the way they sort of...cobbled it together, piece by piece as they could afford to. It's been the sight of a building since at least the Romans, and was a Norman church for quite a while, until a later Archbishop decided that the Norman style of architecture wasn't quite doing it for him, wanting instead something a little airier. Rather than scrap the whole thing, he started replacing the Minster wall by wall, first constructing a Gothic wall several feet beyond the standing Norman walls, and then knocking the existing walls one by one.

Not exactly the best idea, because their measurements were often off by just a hair, so by the time they connected everything, the line of the walls was off by about a foot. Which I suppose is not bad, in an age without calculators and AutoCAD.

On the other hand, it allows buildings archaeologists (such as myself) the opportunity to study the evolution of the Gothic style over a century of practice. See, when they first started experimenting with the Gothic style (characterised by high, arching windows, and thin stone supports in between), they didn't really know how much of a load the supports could hold. So the first Gothic windows in the Minster are pretty small, with thick supports in between. But by the time they finished, the masons realised that very little stone support was needed to hold up huge, airy windows.

It's funny, I never imagined a cathedral could be so ... asymmetrical. And yet, you can see where they messed up, and had to switch up the window order, or where they realised the wall wouldn't be long enough to have three equally sized windows, so rather than making all three smaller, they just adjusted the size of the last one.

(On a related note, there's a pub just down the street called the Three legged Mare. It's called the Wonky Donkey by locals. Coincidence? I think not. This Minster is decidedly wonky.)

I've also walked the walls, which is supposed to only take about and hour and a half, but with several...informative detours, it took us three hours. But it was a nice day, and we found a lot of other stuff, so it was well worth it.

(Hey look, Ma! I'm alive!)

And yesterday I went on what can only be characterised as an Epic Hike.

I have a bunch of photos, so I'll be sure to post again soon!

York!

Well, here I am, safe and sound. It was quite an... interesting experience getting here. I flew into Manchester, and expected to take the train straight from the airport to York.
That was my first mistake.

Apparently, some where down the line, someone had stolen the cables from the track, so all the trains were running exceptionally late, if they ran at all. Sometimes, they were just randomly cancelled, but British Rail failed to actually tell anyone that, so not only did I not have a train to catch, but neither did the drivers (which, I confess, made me feel better about the whole experience). So I changed trains in central Manchester, and then was left without a train. I tried to board one, only to have it be cancelled in the time it took me to walk from the schedule board to the platform (about 100 feet. Seriously.).

To say that I was thoroughly confused is an understatement. To say that I was utterly exhausted, lugging more than my weight in luggage, and covered in sweat due to unseasonable heat, however, is entirely accurate.

I was not a pretty picture, but thankfully, the people of the North overlooked all that. I struck up conversation with a couple, recently returned from Las Vegas, who promised to get me to York come hell or high water. They kept an eye on me, making sure we all got to the right platform, making sure I got on the train in all the confusion, and just generally being really nice, and calling me ‘love’ a lot. Once on the train, I lost sight of them due to the mass number of people, but I got stuck in the first class luggage hold with four older women who were very nice to chat with.

And once I got to York, I called up the woman I was couch surfing with, and we made arrangements to met up in the city center. I left my luggage at the train station, and wandered around York for an hour. Holy cow, I love this city already, and I can’t wait to get to know it better. There is quite a bit of tourism here, and since it was unseasonably nice here all weekend, it was packed with daytrippers.
So I met my host, Carol, and we had a drink next to the river Ouse, and chatted about York, and then she offered to give me a tour of the city. We went past my house, and my program’s building, both of which are almost directly in the city center. We went to the Museum Gardens, which are absolutely stunning. There’s a ruined abbey just plopped down in the middle of the Gardens, for sun bathers and readers to lean casually against, or for small children to climb over, despite the fact that it dates back to at least the 12th century. Ain't no thang.


And then we took the bus back to her place, where I had the best potato soup in the world. So.Good. She had a Swiss exchange student staying with her, who was very nice. Carol was absolutely lovely, and so generous and kind. We had biscuits and tea, and watched tv, and I fell asleep. I also had shower that was like a religious experience after a day of hauling luggage in extreme humidity, and brushing my teeth, I may have had an epiphany. Carol’s a nurse, so I didn’t see her the next morning, but Angelica walked me to the bus stop, and I made my way back to King’s Manor for my keys.

(The view from my window)

(Half of my room)

(The other half. Yes, I have two desks. And a rather large room.)