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Around here, you can’t put a spade in the earth without finding traces of Romans. So when a dairy factory was demolished in Cuijk, one of the larger towns in our municipality, they found traces of Roman activity. But not just anything, but a field of graves! This is extra interesting because you can expect lots of artefacts that were given as grave goods to the dead, which gives a good image of what people used and what they thought was important.

Today, they had an open house at the dig, and we visited it. It was very interesting to see the archeology in action, and the volunteers and professional archeologists were on site to give explanations.

The ‘dig’ is almost finished, or at least: it’s going to end. Because I think they can just keep digging and keep finding stuff.

A volunteer of the local archeology group showed us pottery shards from a Roman-era factory in France, which had 600 potters working there at its height. It really shows how far people traveled and how far commerce was spreading these wares all across Europe.

The top find of the dig was a completely intact Roman oil lamp. It is in the shape of a face, with the mouth opening to the oil reservoir. We bought the keychain and a tote bag with a drawing of the oil lamp to support the local archeology volunteer group. (“Ceuclum” being the Latin name of the town of Cuijk, so if I remember my Latin correctly, “CEUCLUM REVIVISCIT” means something like “Ceuclum revived”, or “Ceuclum herleeft” in Dutch.)

There was also a little ‘market’ with stands of the volunteers showing the finds, but also more generic “Roman-themed” stands with information on Roman culture.

It was fun to hear about Roman medical instruments, and there were re-enactors that gladly posed for photos in full regalia. We also talked to the lady who went through burned plant matter in the graves to identify plants that were cultivated in the area.

There was also a pile of sand where they had hidden metal bits and pieces, and a metal detector for kids to find these! When we were there, two kids were really going for it, and their mother and grand-mother were getting cold and bored standing around for a long time. So mother said: “Well, we’ll come and pick you up later!” Daughter asked when, and where they would go in the meantime, and the answer was something like “In a few hours, after we had lunch or something…!”

The children objected, but they also wanted to keep digging… For all we know, they are digging still!

Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.