As you know, the mission of this blog is to give as honest a picture of the life of an archaeologist (well, archaeology digger. Proper archaeologists do far more note-taking and geometry). As such I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that drinking parties are a big part of archaeological culture. Four of the five days out of the week there is some sort of post-dig gathering which involves getting together around a pint. I expect this evolved from rural archaeology: there's just not a lot to do out in the middle of nowhere, even if it was a bustling metropolis 8,000 years ago. It's practically part of the job description, for better or for worse.
Now, this isn't a teetotaling blog. I have no problem with alcohol, although I'm not a huge fan of it myself. Sola dosis facit venenum, and other people's habits are none of my business. What I'm actually more interested in is the sheer volume of social outings in an archaeological dig. I'm a pretty solitary person myself, and the thought of spending seven hours a day five days a week with other people and then immediately spending more time with them afterwords makes my head spin. It boggles the mind. I counted myself lucky every day this trip that I have roommates as private as myself.
Now, this isn't a new dilemma for me. A good portion of my college career was spent dealing with the sheer volume of social interaction, and honestly, I didn't really deal with it particularly well. I actually find it incredible that most people considered dorms to be the hotbed of friend-making, because for me, the lack of privacy was suffocating. Sure, I met a whole number of nice, interesting people, but the fact that I could never get away from other people made me kind of shut down. I spent most of my freshman and sophomore year desperately looking for some place where there just weren't other people, which is a very difficult thing to do on a college campus in one of the largest cities in the country. As a matter of fact, it wasn't until I got my own apartment that I actually started relaxing and opening up to people. Having a private space is very important to me.
This being the case, I was quite apprehensive when I first came to the dig. Once again, I was dealing with a severe deficit of private space, and a social marathon by all accounts. I was quite worried that I would repeat my first two years of college, in which I would become so hostile to the presence of other people that I would act with hostility to the people themselves.
What I hadn't expected was the effect that the actual physical work would have on me. A lot of my social aversion comes from sensory overload. People are very complex, in terms of sensory input: not only do you have the physical stimuli, but you also have social cues to watch and listen for, group dynamics to keep track of, and, in large groups, need to devote energy to constantly jocky for position in a conversation. Highly introverted people like myself can be pretty easily overwhelmed by it all, especially if there are a lot of people to pay attention to. In the same way that an over-sweetened beverage is disgustingly sweet, or listening to heavy traffic is exhausting, it's the same with people.
What I found with heavy manual labor, though, is that by the end of the day I was so exhausted and filled with endorphins that the chaotic buzz subsided somewhat. It wasn't that I was suddenly a social butterfly because I had broken a sweat, but more that I was so dog-tired that I just stopped caring about the higher level social stuff. Physical appearance, for one, fell by the wayside: in archaeology everyone looks terrible (except for one girl who dropped in the middle of the dig for a couple of weeks. Somehow she managed to look like a fashion model every day). Likewise, my tolerance for clique politics dropped to next to nothing. I'm sure there was some drama in certain pockets here or there, but I was too exhausted to care. If someone was nice to me, they seemed fine, if not, great, one less person I have to care about As a note, I did not actually meet anyone who wasn't pleasant to me. This year was a good lot.
What was most surprising to me though was that this attitude shift stuck around. Even at the beginning of the dig, I was apprehensive about the time I spent around people, and the time I didn't. I usually spent most of my off-time by myself, and a good deal of the time for the first couple of weeks I was rather anxious about it. Not because I didn't want to spend time alone, but because I felt like I wasn't supposed to want to spend so much time alone, and I worried what signals I might be sending to others that I rarely went to the various after-dig festivities. But as time went on, I increasingly realized that other people didn't really care, and neither did I.
Ironically, this actually allowed me to be more social. Since I didn't spend nearly as much of my social energy considering the possibilities of what other people were thinking when I was alone, I had more energy to actually spend time with others, and the time I did spend alone was much more restful. Instead of spending 95% of my off time alone and 5% of my time with others, I now spend 85% of my time alone and 15% of my time with other people. Hey, I like my alone time. Sue me.
So what's the take away from this? Cure your social anxiety by doing so much manual labor you no longer have the energy to care? Eh, I'm not a psychotherapist. It worked for me.
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