The Globe and Mail's Irene Galea searches for fossils in washed material at an archeological dig site in Germany. A meticulous eye is needed at the bottom of the sieve, where pressurized water from recycled fire hoses separates bone fragments, shells and stones from the excavated silt.Supplied
I’m up to my ankles in clay in southern Bavaria. It’s pouring. I’m drenched. The deep footprints around me are filling with muddy water, and wedged in the one behind me lies the bottom of my right hiking boot.
No wonder everyone else is wearing rain boots, I think. The mud oozes into my sock.
I can’t say it’s exactly what I pictured when I sat – clean and dry – in my Toronto bedroom last February, drafting a frenzied half-English, half-German e-mail to paleontologist Madelaine Böhme. I had just finished her 2020 book about human evolution, Ancient Bones, and wanted to know: Was she still excavating? If so, could I come?
Joining a team of scholars and archeology students sounded right up my alley for summer vacation. I wanted to be where the action was: witness the remains of ancient life, pulled straight from the dirt. And lately, I’ve been yearning to contribute to something larger … say, the Miocene fossil record.
Every year, the excavation at Hammerschmiede, Germany draws interested locals and amateur archeologists from surrounding towns.Supplied
It was a long shot. Böhme, a paleontologist with the University of Tübingen in southern Germany, made headlines globally in 2019 following her discovery of Danuvius guggenmosi, an 11.6-million-year-old extinct ape showing signs of bipedalism. Her findings suggest that upright walking could have evolved in human ancestors millions of years earlier than previously thought. It’s a discovery of substantial importance.
I’ve been eager to get back to a dig site since leaving my last one: excavating a Moorish castle in Spain. But prehistoric remains? I wasn’t sure if an amateur would be welcome.
And yet, a week later, her response appeared in my inbox. I would be very welcome, she said. By August, the arrangements were settled: For all volunteers, accommodation and food (excluding beer) would be covered by the university’s funding. All I had to do was get there.
That’s why, in the first week of September, I found myself in the Hammerschmiede clay pit an hour east of Munich, the pungent smell of clay in the air and my right sock coated in muck. I won’t lie, for a moment I wondered if I had made a mistake.
But then we started excavating, and the fossils appeared.
“This,” Böhme told us, holding a chewing-gum-like mass, “is the upper third premolar of an antelope.” She raised it up for our inspection. Wet sand clung to it in places, but where it was clean it gleamed like polished ebony.
The ancient Miocene riverbed, now dried into sandy silt flecked with clay, is full of ancient fish, mammals and reptiles, all around 11 million years old. The bones are fragmented, but they’re relatively common.
The dig team uses a rotational sieve inspired by 19th-century gold panning equipment in North America to separate small bones from clay and sand. With the sieve, the Prof. Madelaine Böhme and her team can sort through 450 buckets of earth every day.
The Globe's Irene Galea, centre, helps keep the rotating sieve loaded with excavated material from the dig site, 15 meters away.Thomas Lechner/Supplied
For a week, I woke early, sped through breakfast and trudged in borrowed rain boots up the 20-metre slope to the dig site. We hunched over the sandy edges of the excavation zone, passing our shovels through the ancient riverbed and feeling for the hard resistance that meant we had hit bone.
Often I worked with “Rosie,” a rotating sieve built by Thomas Lechner, the PhD student managing the dig. It’s made of an old industrial boiler and recycled firefighting hoses. He said he was inspired by late 19th-century gold panning equipment in Alaska and northern Canada.
We shovelled the excavated clay-sand mixture into an opening on one end, and high-pressured water washed away the sediment, leaving only stones, bones and shells. They dropped into trays below and I picked through them for hours, sorting the bones by size and quality.
Frequent finds include fragments of snapping turtle shells and foot bones from large mammals.
Finds uncovered from one hour working with the sieve include teeth and bones from numerous species of fish, reptiles and mammals.Supplied
After a few days picking through the fragments, I could identify many of the 140 vertebrate species common to site. The lower mandible of Euroxenomys minutus, a small beaver, with teeth still implanted. Shell fragments from the family testudinidae – turtles. A long bone of Albanensia grimmi, a flying squirrel. And dozens of snake vertebrae, the size of pencil erasers.
Prior to Rosie, the Hammerschmiede team could hunt through 60 buckets of earth per day. With Rosie, that number has jumped to 450.
In the evenings, all the volunteers – most of whom are locals – gathered for dinner and to talk about that day’s finds. At times, it was a challenge not being fluent in German, but the total immersion helped me learn. I kept a running translation key in my notebook, and by the end of the week I was verging on conversational.
It may be a strange way to vacation, but I was in my element.
For me, this is the ideal way to travel: learning new skills, practicing a different language and making connections as I really get to know a place.
And if losing your shoe soles in a clay pit in southern Germany sounds like fun, there are more flying squirrels, beavers and turtles to be found at Hammerschmiede.
“We’re open for everybody,” says Böhme.
Over 12 years of excavations, over 150 volunteers have joined the Hammerschmiede dig, mostly from the surrounding towns. The Globe's Irene Galea, standing four from the left, was the first to join from North America.Supplied
INTERESTED IN VOLUNTEERING?
Archaeologists are often in need of volunteers. Search for opportunities offered by credible universities and institutions. For instance, the Archaeological Institute of America maintains a list of digs for the following season. These usually charge anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a week for room and board.
Other archaeologists have told me they’re open to interested members of the public. David Begun, professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, said he has brought keen amateurs with him to a site he directs in Rudabánya, Hungary. There’s no guarantee it will work, but it’s worth a try to reach out to archaeologists directly.
Not all voluntourism is appropriate. International volunteering, especially in poorer nations, can be culturally insensitive and risks harming the community it aims to help. And where archaeology is concerned – especially when working with human remains or at culturally sensitive sites – volunteers should research the dig and consider the ethics of their participation before signing up.