Excavating at Oss
In the south of the Netherlands, there is a little town called Oss. Leiden University has a tradition of excavating here for decades in order to better understand Iron Age settlements and burial landscapes. Each series of first-year bachelor students attends a field school here. My turn to excavate at Oss soon came. I (over)packed my bags and struggled to get to Leiden Centraal station, where I met my friends to catch the 6:30 train together. I barely had enough hands to carry all of my luggage, but somehow I managed. I was looking forward to the two weeks of fieldwork.
On day one we began with a shovel naming ceremony (I named mine Toodles) and a tour of the field we were going to excavate. The professors hypothesised that the field we were about to excavate (named Oss-Het Brand Zuid) was a funerary landscape during the Iron Age. They were somewhat right. A week before our arrival, the professors dug a few trial trenches. Despite the numerous trenches, only one had revealed an Iron Age feature: the traces of a single burial mound. Burial mounds are rarely found alone. Thus, it is likely that there were a few more, but they were unfortunately lost in the process of ploughing as these fields were repurposed for farming since the Iron Age. The one that survived was dug just deep enough to preserve its outline during ploughing. We were also told that after one of the World Wars, ammunition was dumped in this field, so we needed to be cautious while excavating.
I found it fascinating how humans have repurposed the landscape since the Iron Age. It was an unsettling thought that the ashes of Iron Age people nourished the soil, providing food for future generations. While bullets made by future generations and intended to take lives were all buried in the same field.
The first week was entirely sunny, wonderful weather for fieldwork. But it was too good to be true for the Netherlands. Unfortunately, the good weather did not last for long. During the second week, it was either windy and gloomy or raining. Yet morale remained high. Apple pies were served to celebrate one of the professors’ 25 years on the faculty, and the dreams of uncovering bones remained vivid.
There wasn’t much to be excavated… as it was all ploughed away…
The only features that were exposed were the singular burial mound and a 19th-20th century ditch. In order to learn how to do technical drawings, the professors had to trace for us ‘fake’ features (natural discolourations of the soil) in the ground so that at least we would practise.
Iron Age finds were absent. We would often find 20th-century junk from the demolition of a barn (such as little pieces of brick, pipes or porcelain shards). But that didn’t stop us from having a creative imagination (I swear I found a pebble that had a smiley face on it. I really ). Otherwise, nuggets of iron oxide were very common. Because the field we were digging was prone to flooding, many small chunks of iron oxide would form due to the constant up-and-down movement of the water. Many of us, including myself, took home pockets full of iron oxide nuggets in the hopes of making a fortune from the melted iron, which, according to a professor, would be possible to extract but not very profitable.
Despite the lack of finds and features, our hopes were still high. On the last day, it was raining. One professor said that there were chances of finding funerary evidence nearby the burial mound feature. So we made a square grid of 1 metre by 1 metre, and each student began slowly digging and sifting through the wet soil. It was not pleasant, but we wanted to find something. When we thought we’d found something, we’d call the professor to see what we had discovered. But it would often turn out that our imagination would take the better of us. Our findings were pebbles of pieces of bricks. However, towards the end of the day, someone found traces from the Iron Age: a small piece of cremated bone!! Because of its porous structure, we were certain that we were not imagining things and that it was real bone due to its porous structure.
Despite the apparent lack of archaeological finds, it was a very fun experience from which I learnt a lot. I loved working outside, and I had a great time with my friends. After going to field school, many of us felt like we picked the right degree.
