Loading…
5
I walked the Roman wall in York last month and finally got why archaeologists get excited about dirt layers
I was in York for a work trip in June and had a free afternoon so I walked a stretch of the city wall near Bootham Bar. There was a small sign explaining that the wall sits on top of Roman foundations, and you could actually see the different stone courses, big Roman blocks at the bottom, medieval stuff above, and Victorian patch jobs near the top. What got me was a little viewing panel in the ground showing a trench where they found pottery shards from around 200 AD, just sitting there a few feet under where people walk every day. I stood there for maybe 20 minutes watching tourists step over it without looking down. It hit me that the whole city is basically stacked on itself, layer after layer, and nobody notices because it's just the sidewalk to them. I always thought archaeology was about far off deserts and temples, not the pavement outside a pub. Has anyone here been to a site where the history is just sitting under normal everyday stuff like that?
0 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In0 Comments
No comments yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this discussion.