An Eclectic Set of Adventures

Things are really starting to settle in now that I've been living here for almost two months. I get asked for directions on the street at least once a week, and I'm starting to consider that a surefire sign that I do in fact live here and while I may not be from here I know that a big part of me does belong in this country. And of course, along with the settling in comes the frequent adjustments academically. I've mentioned it before, and it seems to be an over-arching theme.



There are many differences in my background to those of the others in my program, and that's a-okay; I just have to learn to accept that that doesn't necessarily mean I'm stupid if I've never used GIS and hate math and can't really get into heavy science like thermoluminescence dating. Gettysburg gave me a good solid grounding in theory and the platforms to understand everything else and stick my toes in the water and that's where the benefit of my liberal arts education comes from and has taught me.

Now the trick is just convincing my mind in those moments of panic that I'm not stupid, everyone learns and is taught differently. In a meeting with my program convenor in which we spoke about field experience, job opportunities, etc. she mentioned not to worry about those sorts of things (in the context of the conversation it was whether or not to pursue a PhD right away, and how the job market is looking) every day because it'll ruin my experience here. I fought to get here, and I beat other people out. And it's true, and most of the time I believe that.

But I'm still working on it.

Other days, I completely forget I'm in a different country because it just feels that much like home. Of course, that might also be because I either stay in my room most of the day doing work, or I go up to the archaeology room and happen to not hear a Scottish voice for a while. Strange. Nevertheless...

Cup-and-ring marks, Achnabreck

In less deep news, some other adventures happened the past couple of weeks. On the 19th of October, some of the archaeology PGTs, PhDs and three busloads of first-year undergraduates took a trip up through Kilmartin Glen. We stopped at various sites along a stretch of land that were all connected, our first being Achnabreck to see Pre-Historic rock art (as seen to the right). The marks themselves are called cup-and-ring mark. No one's really all that sure what the intent behind cup-and-ring marks are (my internal thought process when the prospect of just plain old art came up was "maybe they're prehistoric Picasso's?") There was a huge open-face rock on which we could look up close at the cup-and-ring marks and examine them for ourselves. Now, prehistory isn't my thing, but you can't deny that it was pretty cool to be able to see cup-and-ring marks in person, especially since that's one of the first things you learn in an intro class textbook.

Dunadd view

From Achnabreck we headed to Dunadd. Dunadd is the site of a hillfort and you can still see evidence from various ramparts and walls. It had a long period of occupation and I've got a link about it right here that'll lead you to the Historic Scotland record. There's a footprint at the top of Dunadd (or well, a cast of the footprint so that the real one won't get weathered down and worn by many a traveller comparing shoe sizes) that would be used in the crowning of the King. Not to mention, the view from Dunadd is gorgeous. While the views are certainly better on a clear day, the mist definitely adds to the effect of it all.

From Dunadd, we shipped off down the road to Kilmartin Parish Church and Churchyard to look at some Christian sculpture. This time, we were getting closer to my sort of thing! There are some pretty beautiful grave slabs, some particularly old, and some not that old at all (Reformation period: the 16th century); Dr Batey spoke with us about two beautiful free-standing crosses; one of them is absolutely gorgeous, and is pictured below. The other is equally amazing but unfortunately, as tends to happen to sculpture, parts of it are missing. The amazing thing is when you look at these up close, you can sometimes see where the intent with the piece was going. Though we have large sections missing, you can glimpse the overarching motif, see how it was carved and imagine how the whole thing would've looked.

Parish churchyard

Center of free-standing cross

And finally from Kilmartin we finished our trip at Nether Largie standing stones and a visit to a Bronze Age burial and Neolithic cairn. I still can't believe the different approaches to antiquities that exist all throughout the world. My experience with museums/antiquities would be drastically different at home, with everything protected, roped off, behind glass - to Egypt: where sometimes things are roped off, and sometimes people ignore the ropes anyway - to Scotland: where you can go inside a Neolithic cairn and just hang out... because that's what Celtic and Viking Archaeologists do, of course!

Nether Largie Standing Stones

Bronze Age stone circle with a beaker burial

The CVA crew's clubhouse! Ignore our silly faces, I think we
 were looking at graffiti. Photo cred: Kristina!

Thus, it was a long and tiring day and a very exciting one as well. Something I really am grateful for in my program is the ability to take so many field trips like this one to places I might otherwise never get to see (despite the fact that essays often come attached to said trips), and for free!

But wait, this blog entry isn't quite done! The day after my field trip, I headed off to the train station for what would be the most interesting next three days. I met a very good friend of mine for the first time, and she was going to stay three days with me here in Glasgow! Alex and I met over the internet, curiously enough because we both really liked Amazing Grace, which is a fantastic movie about the abolition of the slave trade in 18th century Britain (*cough go watch it cough*); we met about a year and a half ago and never would have gotten the chance to meet because we live so far apart in the States, if it weren't for Scotland. We now live a measly 25 minute train ride from one another.

The nerves of meeting each other for the first time and hoping that we weren't some extremely clever internet-creeper were diminished when we met at the train station and were all grins on the way back. I don't want to get into the friendship-mush but honestly it felt as though, to me anyway, that we had known each other for longer in person than just you know, five minutes ago... It was also a chance to show someone my favourite parts of Glasgow, make a brownie in a mug and watch Downton Abbey, have some like-minded company while strolling through museums and the University's campus, and walk god knows how many miles all over the city. We must've walked at least a good four or five miles on Saturday!

Alex professes that she had a good time, which is good, because I'm a rather paranoid host, but we did lots of good things. We figured out you could get tea in the BBC Scotland building because it's in the lobby and not beyond the ID checkpoint (everyone else worked there so we had to play it cool and blend in; I think Alex failed as she was rather excited), we walked around The Tall Ship, a bit of the Riverside Museum, the Kelvingrove, City Centre, George Square, and even went to see my first film in the cinemas here - The Fifth Estate (also another good movie!).

Turns out people also think we look similar?

After I dropped Alex back off at the train station Tuesday afternoon with promises of visits both back here to Glasgow, and myself over to Stirling, the crack-down began to read as many things for class that I had neglected while hosting a guest as possible. Thankfully, I got the majority of it done and even enjoyed most of it! And then finally, the last event that has happened was a half day field trip to SUERC.

SUERC stands for the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre. Why did we go there, you ask? Well, the archaeology postgrads did a field trip to SUERC to see how the science-y things involved in archaeology worked! We got a tour of one of the only four research-based Accelerator Mass Spectrometry machines in the UK (Glasgow has two of the four, which allows for some bragging as Oxford only has one) which is used to obtain radiocarbon dates necessary for some archaeological evidence. We additionally toured a thermoluminesence lab and smaller radiocarbon lab. Basically, it was a morning full of science.

And now, we're all caught up to now. Basically the biggest hurdles/events at the moment are feeling confident enough to submit this next essay which is worth not 25%, but 30% of my final grade, and figuring out what to do for Christmas!

 Until next time...