Field archaeology has its perks, one of which is the interaction with the public. Most site visitors are simply full of polite interest. A few tend to be local patriots who wish to reaffirm that their neck of the woods was once enormously important. And then there are those who, well, possess more curiosity than knowledge, shall we say.

A colleague at the Stockholm Town Museum told me a story about this latter group. He was digging in the Old Town once, when a person approached his trench and looked intently at his spoil dumps. After a while this person stooped and picked a small stone out of a dump. “Excuse me”, they asked, “is this stone from the Middle Ages?”.

Replied my colleague, straight-facedly, “As a matter of fact, that stone is actually a bit older even than the Middle Ages”.