Pair follow passion for digging up the past
Lennane Kent was digging through dense clay at Vindolanda, a Roman fort in England, when she came across a well-preserved coin that was thousands of years old.
‘‘I really almost didn’t believe it because I was going through clay and I got a glint, fished around and that came up and I was highly chuffed.’’
It’s not the first treasure Kent has unearthed because in the last five years, along with husband Mike Cooper , the Atawhai woman has been on 15 archaeological digs around the world.
The couple have travelled to Spain, England, Romania and Bulgaria and discovered the remains of houses, bone tools and pottery shards among other artefacts.
‘‘We used to travel a lot and we would spend our time climbing these foreign monuments and climbing over old stones and we thought, bugger this, there must be ways of getting our own piles of old stones,’’ Cooper said.
He always had an interest in archaeology, but no real experience in excavation.
So he got on the internet and found several organisations where people with no formal experience could participate in archaeological digs.
In the first year the couple travelled to Spain and Bulgaria for digs and enjoyed it so much that they decided to sign up for more.
They were taught archaeology skills on the field trips and have become quite good at the excavation process. ’’It’s a glorious way of having a holiday,’’ Cooper said.
They have returned to one of their favourite spots each year, Illindentsi in southwest Bulgaria, a neolithic site which is about 600 years old.
Digging is done with a fourinch trowel and Cooper said they were looking for patterns in the soil that could reveal where a house, hearth or a rubbish pit once was.
‘‘What we are trying to do is discover how the people lived and how they came to be there,’’ Cooper said.
Cooper said he loved ’’the excitement of the chase’’ and putting to use the skills he had developed.
‘‘Lennane has become an expert on cleaning and defining rocks and my expertise tends to be digging out pits.’’
Most of the others on the field school programmes were university students from America and Canada and the couple were yet to meet any other Kiwis.
Despite the age difference ’’the people involved have become friends so it is sort of like going home and becoming part of the family,’’ Cooper said.