True Confession: I Love Archeology!

Yes, I love archeology and ancient history.

Whenever I want to relax, I turn on the Science Channel to watch Unearthed, or Mysteries of the Abandoned.
 
I have two magazine subscriptions (Archaeological Institute of America, and Current World Archeology) and look forward to them like a kid waiting for his Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring to arrive in the mail.

On my last vacation, I brought books to read and some drawing materials. One book in particular grabbed me and wouldn't let go; The Sutton Hoo Story by Martin Carver. I felt moved to produce drawings inspired by what I learned and saw.

I find myself so fascinated by archeology that, at some point, I may create an entirely new body of work. It's all very speculative, but it is very exciting for me, and I wanted to share it with you now.

What is Sutton Hoo? ⁠

It's a burial site in England, with many types of burials, from royal barrows to gallows graveyard, dating from the 6th to 7th centuries.⁠ They appear as mounds on a flat landscape, next to the River Deben.

There is a really great movie based on a novel, both called The Dig that dramatizes the excavation of Mound 1, where some of the most impressive and beautiful artifacts ever found in Britain were discovered.

But while I like jewels and treasures, it is the dirt and bones that really intrigue me.

My first endeavor was a pencil sketch of the remains in burial Mound 17.

Mound 17 was an un-looted burial mound whose inhabitant was buried in a tree trunk coffin (how COOL is that?) sometime between 560-650 AD.

Among other things, there were caldrons, weapons, a comb, and the remains of a bridle. In another mound close by, his horse was interred, along with a bucket of oats.

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My next sketch was of another, very different type of grave.

After the region had converted to Christianity, this sacred ground, populated with rich burial mounds for esteemed community leaders, was used as a place to execute convicted criminals. A gallows was erected on one of the mounds, and the site is littered with shallow graves of the disgraced and condemned.

But the thing that makes it all the more more fascinating, is that there is actually no body there at all. The acidic soil of the area consumes organic material.

But the body that was once there changes the make-up of the soil, making it dark and crusty. When someone excavates it, they can carefully remove the soil around where the body once was, leaving a fragile "sand man".

It's sad, it's haunting and it's beautiful.

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The last piece I produced is a pencil sketch of an idea I have brewing in the back of my brain. My impulse is to layer, somehow, images and inspirations from digs. I would like to create drawings of the finds, and layer them with schematic diagrams and maps, along with my imagined scenarios of the people and objects when they were alive and in use. I may need to learn a new medium, such as encaustic, to gain the effect I want.

This is a rough idea of what I might do. It is a composite image of things from the famous Mound 1. Below the sketch are images from the book that I have woven into the sketch.

Mound 1 was covering a large ship. Within the hull of the ship there was a wooden burial chamber, containing a coffin and body, and many stunningly valuable grave goods. It is one of the most famous archeological finds in history.

But, like the "sand men", the actual ship, chamber, and body have long since dissolved. But the wood of the ships hull, again, changed the make up of the sand, and what was left was a ghostly impression of a ship, along with the corroded iron rivets, in long, graceful, curving lines.

This is a photograph of Basil Brown, standing in the middle of the ship. He was the self-taught archeologist who excavated the un-looted grave in 1938.

The second image here is a schematic drawing archeologists have made, depicting what they believe the original burial chamber within the ship contained.

The third image here is a schematic map of the area, with black dots depicting the location of various burial mounds, and the three hypothetical routes by which the mourners transported the ship from the River Deben, up the bank, to the burial site, to inter the deceased.

I'm really not sure where this is headed. It's very exciting and a little scary.
 
I will continue with my current series of art based on film noir until it feels right to commence on this new path.
 
Maybe I never will get to it, or maybe I will start next week.
 
Stay tuned.