“Elliott, it is 8pm. Stop working,” a deep bass rumbled across the chainlink storage shed. She had been rinsing and hanging up some of the equipment from the day’s dive and her mind had drifted off. This was usually the students’ task, but they had started getting sloppy as the first summer term drew to a close. Instead of making it a teachable moment, Elliott had rathered that it just got done.
“It’s field season, Karl,” she chuckled, “There’s no end to the work.”
“You are very American,” he frowned, and headed off to his own cottage.
He was right, she knew. Americans in academia approached their relationships to their jobs in a very different, and usually unhealthy way. Products of a capitalist death cult that has convinced every laborer that their individual worth is measurable by their productivity, and is bent on destroying the very asset that it most relies upon by literally working each citizen to death, Karl would have said, his voice getting more insistent with every buzzword. And then something about equating morality to employment, but by that time Elle would likely have stopped listening. She didn’t mind equating her worth to her work; at least not at the moment. He was right about her.
Karl Alqvist was usually gruff and short, but Pike’s bourbon and Anouk’s encouragement had a way of coaxing the occasional diatribe out of him. An environmental archaeologist and sedimentologist by training, he now ran the machine shop and labs at the field school. This put him in charge of pretty much anything with moving parts; from compressors and shakers and ovens, to vehicles and microscopes and sieves. And as the resident expert on lab logistics, soil processing and residue sampling, he was also the general go-to guy for solving a range of problems; something he neither understood nor appreciated.
In fact, Karl had no idea that he was the favorite coworker of nearly everyone on the team; half of them wanted to sleep with him, the other half wanted to be him. That he wore a look of constant bewilderment under his bushy blond beard further endeared him to everyone who met him. He was a cranky, socialist teddy bear, checking the box for nearly every Swedish physical stereotype; nearly seven feet tall, blond, ruddy-cheeked, broad-chested, bearded, inexplicably tanned, blue-eyed, and in possession of more finely-woven wool sweaters than any man should reasonably own.
He looked like the romance novel version of a Viking scoundrel.
Elliott blinked. That was entirely enough thinking about Karl. She turned off the garden hose and looked out into the twilight. It was hard to notice the passage of time during summer at this latitude. Christ, she was starving.
The past six months had been a breakneck roller coaster of planning her classes, meeting new people, writing grants, delivering reports to the board, diving, teaching, building things, fixing things, organizing things, and guiltily allowing some things to pile up. Elliott was exhausted at the end of every day, but invigorated enough every morning to do it all over again. It reminded her of the early days of graduate school, when everything was exciting, every path was clear, and every goal was within reach.
She had a private meeting with Nik once a week to check in, and once they finally had their finds library and the labs set up and running, their publications had begun racing out to journals all over the world.
And the world was paying attention. The field school already had a waiting list over a year long and PhD students had started timidly inviting Elliott to sit on their panels or requesting her as an outside supervisor.
As she trudged through the muddy paths and offered quick greetings to the people she passed, she reflected again on how lucky all of this was; that Nik had hired her, that the team had come on board so quickly, that they were already having such success, even that he’d had found such a perfect location.
The base camp that housed all these archaeologists and their equipment and finds was a re-purposed industrial laundry facility of typical sturdy Swedish construction. It was made up of one labyrinthine main building and a sprawling complex of outbuildings, warehouses, cottages, sheds, and even something that resembled a stable.
The area of the main building that had housed the long line of laundry machinery had been refitted as an industrial kitchen, dining hall, and unofficial social hub. The delivery bays had been refitted as the ‘finds library’, where the archivists cleaned and stored the spoils of the day. Some of the various warehouses and outbuildings had been refitted as dormitories, some had been refitted as presentation (and sometimes entertainment) venues. The offices remained offices, and the machine rooms remained machine rooms.
There were open spaces on the property where some teams set up military-style field tents for their dig season. Muddy old Land Cruisers (belonging to the academics) shared space with shiny, hired Land Cruisers (belonging to the professionals).
The property itself was strangely shaped and had clearly been acquired piecemeal by the previous owners, like everything else. Set back from the main road and accessible only by a long drive, the compound was surrounded on all sides by lush, dark evergreens. The terrain was rough, the weather uncooperative, the people grim, the work overwhelming, and Elliott loved every moment.
As she rounded a forested bend and entered the clearing where her cottage lay, she smiled at the sight. The private cottages hidden throughout the property were mostly occupied by the permanent team. Elliott had selected the one nearest to the main building back in the early days when she was the only person in the compound.
It was an ancient and picturesque little building with red cedar walls, white-washed stone accents, and a low, steep roof of grey slate tiles. With its traditional ceramic stove and polished wood interior, it was cosy and warm even on the dampest nights and Elliott would sometimes host book club meetings in the small, comfortable space. She maneuvered out of her Wellies and left them by the door, already focused on the tea she was about to make and the notes she was about to record. It had become fully dark and unseasonably cool by the time she arrived, and she was looking forward to tea, dinner, and settling in to her evening work.
She flipped on the war-weary kettle, but instead of the familiar groaning and ticking, there was only silence. She checked the connection and tried again. Nothing. Only the most dire needs would drag her out into the gloom once her shoes were off for the day, but Elliott sighed, grabbed a flashlight, and headed back for the front door.
The problem with living in a massive compound with industrially equipped kitchens, Elliott was constantly reminded, is that everything was industrial-sized. Hot water came from giant, constantly churning taps. Sensible Anouk sent off a bulk order for dry goods once a month, with fresh produce delivered weekly, so instant coffee was scooped from hilariously oversized cans and tea bags were strewn about in massive boxes. Unless you had your own kettle, French press, and real coffee, the chances of enjoying a quiet cuppa in your own space, on your own time, were very slim.
The lifeblood circulating around the compound was a small army of mismatched kettles. New arrivals realized very quickly that they were a necessary staple to have in your dormitory, office, or equipment room, and cleared the shelves of the local markets on their first shopping trip. The local Swedish business-owners were already learning to appreciate this windfall.
After a team finished their project and went back to the mainland, battalions of their weary kettles, some beyond repair, were left hiding in the nooks and crannies of the compound. Ellie had long ago gotten wise to this cycle, and frequently replaced her aging kettles with the shiny leftovers. This allowed her to avoid the kitchens at off-hours, when they became the social hub of the compound.
As she trekked back through the woods toward the main building, she was grateful that she’d brought her torch and opted for her jacket. A still night had moved in fully and brought a light fog and distinct chill. The moon, if there was one, was covered in thick clouds, and Elliott was unnerved by the closeness of the air. Every crunch and squish of her boots seemed to whoosh and pop like a crackling bonfire.
It wasn’t all that late, but the compound had become very empty, which pleased her. She was not anti-social by nature, but she found that maintaining a distance from the constant overturn of students was important for maintaining her position as an authority figure. She had a few good friends spread out across the globe, and even one or two at the compound, but she had started carefully considering her position and her career before she got to know people here.
Elliott drew closer to the main building and saw through the windows that there were still a number of people in that evening, including her friend Pike, who was leaning against a stainless steel kitchen work surface and staring grumpily at her phone. Elliott smiled at Pike’s sour expression. She entered the building through the dining hall, walked through the scattered tables, and continued straight into the kitchen, momentarily forgetting her kettle mission in favor of cheering up her friend.
“Hi Pikey, what’s got you so sour this fine evening?”
“Fucking Collarey calling my fucking work ‘preliminary’ again. I swear to God Elle, ever since he MBE’d he thinks he’s the king of the Bronze Age. He’s out to fucking get me,” fumed the disheveled woman, pointing to her phone.
While Pike may be locally known for her scathing temper and foul mouth, as an academic she had an unassailable reputation for innovative experimental methods and rigorous perfectionism. For another academic to call her work ‘preliminary’ was actually objectively insulting, and Pike was probably correct that it was a personal attack. Elliott was dimly aware of the acrimonious personal history between Pike and Carston Collarey but had never pried the full story from her surly friend.
“How do you know it was him? Is it an article review?"
“No, it’s just a fucking conference paper proposal, but I know it’s him,” snapped Pike. “He always gives himself away with his overuse of whilst and then goes in with that fucking preliminary bullshit.”
Elliott looked around the room to see who might overhear. There were a few students quietly studying at a dining table, a potentially amorous couple from the professional set having a quiet chat over a bottle of wine (how do they stay so clean? Elliott thought dimly), and a few solitary readers and late-night snackers scattered throughout the adjoining large room. No one important to overhear the performance she was about to stage.
Some weeks ago, Elliott, Nik, Pike, and a few others had gotten heartily drunk and tried to out-do each other with their best Carston Collarey impression. He’d been on TV, after all, so his mannerisms were familiar to most of them. Elliott had won the informal competition by reciting from something Collarey himself had written about Pike’s work, and she deployed it now in the hopes that it would cheer her friend, as it did indeed feature his signature word, whilst.
Elliott cleared her throat, pulled a frown, and tilted her head back to look down her nose. “Whilst this publication may be of interest to certain subfields of what may be considered by laypeople to be archaeology….” she began in an exaggerated accent.
She was reciting from Collarey’s scathing review of Pike’s recently-published Routledge Handbook of Archaeological Metallurgy, for which she was credited as editor. The book was a masterclass on a niche topic and had received worldwide acclaim from everyone but Carston Collarey. It really did seem sometimes that he had something personal against her. Pike smiled weakly and picked up the impersonation with an excerpt from the comment she was reading on her phone.
Tilting her own head back, she finished “ ‘… it’s preliminary nature must exclude its membership from the canon of the field.’ The canon of the field? What the actual fuck is he on about? It’s a CONFERENCE PAPER.”
Pike was sputtering with anger at this point. Elliott was also shocked; you just didn’t say things like that when asked to review paper submissions to a conference. Most work presented at conferences was preliminary; that was often the point- to get your ideas out there, to get some feedback, and to improve you methods or enrich your results. In theory, anyway.
“Yikes, that is really something. What do the other reviewers say? Let me see,” said Elliott, grabbing for the phone and reading aloud “…exciting results, nice… promising new methods, yeah… valuable contribution to the field, totally you of course… wh—. Woah.”
Elliott paused and looked up at Pike for a moment before continuing.
“The rigour represented by this researcher is critical to the future of the discipline. Pike, these comments are amazing.”
Pike grunted and calmed a little, “I guess so.”
“No, they are. Besides,” continued Elliott, “no one is going to see what he said except the conference organizers, and they’ve already accepted your paper. They obviously ignored him, and it’s not like he's publishing a review.”
“You’re right, but that’s precisely why I’m so fucking furious. He knew that this message would go straight to me, and now he knows precisely what I’ve been working on and where my projects are going. It was his way of saying, ‘I’m ahead of you now, and I’m not going to stop.’"
Elliott considered Pike's position for a moment and realized she was right. Pike may be salty and given to strong flares of anger, but she she had an incisive and uncannily accurate way of dissecting other people’s intentions. This was not paranoia, this was a vendetta.
Apart from the recent Routledge Handbook, Pike had published a number of brilliant and widely-lauded papers throughout her career. She occupied the extremely tight niche of experimental archaeometallurgy, meaning that she recreated historical technologies for the production of metal objects, such as forges. Where she had gained particular praise was in her careful consideration of the energy required to operate these forges, and that she modeled them exactly on the forges she excavated.
She was able to provide clear evidence every time she wrote a paper, saying, in effect, “a forge of this type, at this time period, at this location, requiring this much of this particular type of fuel, could produce this type of metal objects,” and from there it was just a matter of matching the correct objects to the correct locations. It was as though, at some point in graduate school, Pike had looked at archaeology and decided that it was nothing more than complex system economics. She was good at it, and could convince anyone that her methodology would improve their own research.
On her digs, Pike worked closely with dendochronologists to determine the approximate age of the forges’ structural posts in order to date her sites. She recruited metallurgists to operate the reconstructed forges and took meticulous notes of their successes and failures. She always submitted both results for publication, highlighting the lessons learned from each, to the universal praise of the field.
And besides being good scholarship, it was also just plain cool.
Recently, however, Carston Collarey had begun publishing reviews and responses to her papers, criticizing her methods as little more than a lay-person’s historical re-enactment and living history play-acting best reserve for the village fete.
The academic community had been stunned at his vitriol, but no one had yet been brave enough to challenge him. Now that he’d been become Sir Dr. Collarey for his service to the Empire —“Yeah right!” everyone had said, “He narrated a TV series… talk about play-acting!”—, he would likely go on denigrating Pike’s work unimpeded.
Elliott was incensed.
“Pike, this has to stop. We’ve got to do something. Help me find a new kettle and then let’s get out of here and make a plan.”
Pike groaned in response, but started helping her look.
Hours later, the two friends were walking back to the compound from their secret haunt on the coast. They’d passed a pleasant evening with their friends Tom and Inga at the pub not far from the bed and breakfast. Both Pike and Elliott loved Tom’s outrageous stories, easy manners, and discerning taste in bourbon. And of course they both loved Inga’s no-nonsense corrections, acerbic wit, and occasional flashes of affection.
The women had been too distracted with their conversation to come up with a plan to deal with Collarey, but it hardly mattered. They had driven out to the coast, but were in no condition to be behind the wheel by the end of the night. It was a half hour’s walk back to the compound, but neither one cared. They teetered home arm in arm, cheeks warm and hearts full, two bright and happy glows heedless of the dark and lonely woods.