Mummies, mole people, and cursed mysterious artifacts. Yes, archaeology has its fair share of Hollywood created horrors. For the most part, they’re quite entertaining, but if you want to know what really scares archaeologists, keep reading.
1. Missing Labels
You start off really excited because something amazing has landed on your desk. You can’t wait to find out where it’s from. As your opening the bag, you’re thinking, “This find could change everything!” Then you realize something is very wrong. You frantically check everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE, and nothing. The label is missing. The horror!
2. Lost Trowel
You set it down for just a few moments. Then something distracts you. Someone needs help with a measurement or you really need to go the bathroom. When you come back, it’s gone. You search and search and it’s still nowhere to be found. Who would do such a thing? Or what…
3. The Deadline is Today
You made sure to double and triple check. It wasn’t supposed to happen this soon. You swear it must be a dream. You open your calendar and the shock takes over you. They’re here.
4. Trapped
It can happen in so many ways. Perhaps, they said they just needed to borrow your ladder for a second. It doesn’t matter that you’re five meters deep and your trench is off the main excavation. But it’s been and hour and no one has come back. Or you realize your gas light is flashing and you’re not even on a real road. You don’t remember the last time you saw a gas station. Either way you’re trapped.
5. All the Food is Gone
You’re starving. The day was brutal and you barely could get a bite in. There was no time for breakfast and you had to drive someone to who knows where during lunch. You are briskly walking because dinner is about to start and then it happens. Someone stops you and desperately needs your help. You’re the only one who can fix the problem. You hurry to help them and it feels like hours are going by. When you finally finish, you race to dinner and see the unthinkable. No one is there and there is no food in sight.
6. A Strong Gust of Wind
You have everything laid out like you like it. It’s finally all organized. You even have some makeshift paperweights. Everything is going according to plan, when all of a sudden a strong gust of wind comes in and everything is flying everywhere. You try to grab what you can, but almost everything is out of your reach. And then just like that, everything settles and it looks like nothing happened, except that your stuff is everywhere.
7. Deleted all the Photos
It’s been an amazing day. You’ve made great progress. You keep uncovering feature after feature. You get through photographing a record number of artifacts. Then you see that there is a crappy photo. It brings down your high. You know it shouldn’t, but it’s eating at you. So you do it. You go to delete that one photo, but then something goes terribly wrong. In an instant, they’re all gone. All of them.
*Special thanks to Brooke Norton for brainstorming with me 🙂
You forgot: bedbugs in the hotel you are staying at out in the middle of nowhere.
That’s a good one and definitely scary!
Def. what my mum would comment too!
Nice! Go mums!
Especially when your crappy motel room is covered in gang tag graffiti! Do I wear my red carharts or blue?
you find a site and suddenly others appear and start digging your find , has happened to me twice ! http://www.bbc-antiques.co.uk
That’s definitely happened to some archaeologists I know. I hope it doesn’t happen again for you!
The archaeo-tourist, who is paying to be there and helping to fund the dig, steps EXACTLY where you said not to step and breaks a piece of pottery from the neolithic era. The scream you hold in probably raises your blood pressure beyond the healthy limit…but you hope the selfie they were taking was worth it.
I remember this feeling all to well. For me, this happened before the era of selfies. The selfies take it to a whole other level. Thanks for sharing!
And they feel guilty enough to donate more cash.
You open up a test unit on the most significant location within a site, and the yellow jackets who just happen to live next door don’t approve of their new neighbors and show their displeasure. Repeatedly.
We had to open a trench right next to a very large and active beehive. Definitely not as bad as yellow jackets, but there was always this lingering uncertainty if they were going to get feisty. It (only) happened twice. Thanks for sharing!
Double that to we allergic to the evil striped burrowing harbingers of pain and psychotic breaks as we panic on where we put our EpiPens, and did we train everyone on the crew how to stab with a horse needle!
“Have you found any dinosaurs ?”
I get that question so much it IS scary.
A large, ignorant grazing herd of cattle loping insistently towards your site. Next morning = collapsed side walls, patties in open units, pin flags completely gone, and unit lines scattered for 25 miles across the prairie.
I would be in complete shock if I saw that the next morning. The worst I have gotten is goats. Thanks for sharing!
Had that just this past June at our dig near Amarillo…exactly what you said.
Add to that a baby cow stuck in your unit with Mama guarding it!
somewhere at university of connecticut is a photo of dr. nick bellantoni (former connecticut state archeologist) chest deep in a phase 2 test pit with a herd of cows standing around peeking in & obviously wondering what the crazy human was up to
Two things that happened on a site where I worked. 1) You arrive on site, and see that your portaloo has been tipped over into the ditch, again. 2) You arrive on site and see that about 50 holes have been dug into it during the night. Your site has been looted by nighthawks…
Beat them at their own game, make sure you have a metal detector in your kit and ALWAYS run it over the site to remove anything metal before you leave each day.
You are on the circuit and the firm has organised accommodation. The loon behind who organised it sees nothing wrong with having 2 or 3 diggers share the same bedroom.(Holiday cottage) What is truly scary is going into your room and finding a fellow digger having a bit of solo fun. Somethings cannot be unseen
I’ve had many friends tell me similar tales. Even though I know what I am about to hear, my jaw drops each time. Thanks for the comment!
I experienced #6. A dust devil descended on a site were we had spent most of the day bagging artifacts. Everything flew up in the air, including my straw cowboy hat. We found most of the bags that day. For several days other survey crews would drop off one of our bags they had found on the mesas, accompanied by ‘humorous’ remarks about keeping track of our assemblages. One day someone saw a white thing that had been under a cow that had just stood up. There was my hat – flat as a pancake!
I feel you Roger. We had strong winds come out of nowhere (mixed with sand of course) and a newly cut stack of labels went flying everywhere. We were still finding labels weeks after. Thanks for sharing!
You are doing a phase one and the landman did not inform all land owners properly so they are happy about your project so you are met by the land owner with a gun and he is not afraid to use it. We got out of there fast
Yes experienced that…
That is terrifying! I am glad you made it out safely! Thanks for sharing.
so true 🙂
When you have had to walk to an isolated site and each of the crew has carried their own water and early in the day someone with very questionable oral hygiene grabs your water starts gulping. Very tough decision… Drink from your “contaminated” jug or suffer potential dehydration. Scary very scary.
That is a serious dilemma that I can relate to. Thanks for sharing!
Pretty grim, but beheading is now on my own list…being an archaeologist is my life’s goal achieved, but because of war and ISIS and etc., visiting those countries as an academic and researcher (or even a tourist!) is unlikely to happen in the next few decades.
I think there is another hotly debated and often ignored issue: biscuits. And project managers who dont believe in the importance of providing them or, if they do, bringing crappy biscuits….
I’ve been IN the porta loo when a gust of wind threatened to tip it over. I never got out so fast. And then it DID tip over.
Blue lumpy gunk everywhere!
Yikes! That is scary!
after several digs through clay with the ct.state archeologist, we were blessed with nice fine sandy loam. ever after our well wishes to each other was, “may you always have fine sandy loam!”
When my field director discovered he misplaced the excavation block and midway through the dig decides to reset it by rotating it a few degrees to get it right. Epic paperwork cluster f*ck resulted. Last straw for most: There was a mutiny among the field crew who could not bear his incompetence any longer and massive drug use ensued. Saddest outcome was for the cultural resource as usual.
Yikes! That’s awful!