Aissa Dugjé, Cameroon 11.00 am, July 7, 1996
Copyright 2000: Scott MacEachern

The first thing you notice is that it’s hot. We’ve been at work since 6.30 am, but the coolness of the early morning has burned off and it’s about 105 Fahrenheit already, and hotter in the pits.

There are clouds around and it’s raining near the Mandara Mountains to the west, but it doesn’t look as if it will rain here. That’s just as well; we have about two hours until we end excavation for the day. Aissa Dugjé is a big site, occupied between about 1700 and 800 years ago and nestled between two small inselbergs out in the flatness of the Mora Plain. The most striking features are the 30-plus occupation mounds scattered in its central area, and the crew is excavating three units on and around those mounds today, with 23 people at work. As director of this circus, I often have to spend my time in administration, but things are going well today, we’re all working on one site, and so I get to excavate for a while.

.Most of the actual digging is being done by local men, hired from the neighbouring village of Aissa Hardé and digging with trowels and the short hoes that they use in the fields. After two seasons, they are experienced, careful excavators. Hiring them means that the people of Aissa Hardé know what we are doing at all times, which makes them – and us – feel better. The archaeologists and students, from North America and Cameroon, are in charge of general excavation strategy, keeping notes and records, survey work on the site and excavation of especially delicate objects and the burials that we often find.

Running this three-metre by two-metre unit is an exercise in constant motion. The pit is two metres deep, and I seem to spend all of my time climbing in and out of it. Down at the bottom, on the ancient house floor now being uncovered, I write notes about the artefacts and features that are exposed, measure artefact positions and draw sketch maps, take photographs and talk to Adama and Mahamat Salé about their impressions of what they are finding. When I get a chance, I grab a trowel and brush and join in, but that tends to disrupt the rhythm of the work. I try to restrain myself. As dirt is slowly stripped off the floor, it is passed to the surface in buckets – a back-breaking job, up a two-metre wall – and screened for very small artefacts. There is usually a student at work up top with the screeners, responsible for making sure that everything goes into properly labeled bags. That student is helping with a burial in a nearby pit today, though, and so I scramble up top every five minutes or so, to check on the screening myself. It gets me out of the clouds of dust that hang in the close, hot air of the pit, at least for a minute.

When I climb back down, it takes my eyes a minute to adjust from the brightness of an African morning. Drop back into a squat in the shadows beside the diggers. There are broken potsherds, bits of animal bone and fragments of iron slag all over the ancient floor surface, probably from use of the building as a garbage dump after it was abandoned. The dirt is loose, and permeated with discarded ash as well; changes in the soil that might indicate wall remains or old pits are hard to see. We spend the morning working through a 10cm level over part of the unit, a slower tempo than usual. Change film, try to keep the camera and notebooks clean, make sure there are enough bags labeled, keep writing. Noon now, and I’m up on top again. Excavation of the burial is going well, but there are clouds moving in from the north that I have to keep an eye on. Back down into the pit, and we keep going.

Scott MacEachern is Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bowdoin College, specializing in African archaeology and ethnoarchaeology; his research involves the study of state formation and ethnicity in Iron Age Central Africa.