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LUCKY is not the first word that springs to mind when confronted by a
terminally scruffy person knee-deep in that special mud that only the River
Thames deposits.

But lucky I am. For me, the mud is as delicious as chocolate and the cold
river bed better than Bali. I’m on holiday from my day job and indulging my
passion for archaeology, one of the few sciences where amateurs are
welcome.

This time we’re excavating sunken boats on the foreshore of the Thames near
the Custom House, just down from the Tower of London, under the eye of
archaeologist Iain McCulloch. The only way to get at the data is to shift all
the mud, flotsam and jetsam out of the wrecks manually. Only then can you make a
plan of the boat for the Thames Archaeological Survey, one of the most
comprehensive records of the life of the great river.

Each day, we have to bag up that mud as it comes out, then put it back to
prevent the water washing the boat’s fragile timbers away. Lester Hawksby, a
mathematics student, worked out the mud quotient per digger: 2 tonnes a head.
The mud has a peculiar musty smell that clings even after you’ve washed it
off—you get plenty of room on buses on the way home. It reminds you that
the Thames has been a rubbish dump for millennia.

Our boats are a Thames wherry and a lighter. Slowly, very slowly, something
emerges. Somehow a few crumbling timbers sticking up out of the mud grow into a
whole vessel, its keel clad in gleaming copper (no exposure to air, you see),
and the broken timbers providing clues about how it sank.

All that careful detective work is one of the great turn-ons for
archaeologists. That and the Indiana Jones factor. When the going gets tough,
you can always imagine that the rubbish in your hands could be the next find of
the century and make you an irresistible target for fanatical movie Nazis.

We check the foreshore daily. To date Indy would be disappointed. The haul
includes bits of 17th-century delftware, clay pipe bowls, medieval pot rims
and fragments of wine bottles, cattle bones and pigs’ teeth. Because we’re near
the Roman bit of London, there’s a faint possibility that we’ll find bits of
glossy Samian ware. This is fascinating stuff: made in Gaul, it’s reddish
orange, fine pottery and even though it’s found all over the Roman Empire, it’s
still a bit of a catch.

Which brings me to the other reason I’m lucky. I’m always next to the person
who makes the interesting find. On the foreshore, if I find a Tudor pot rim, a
few minutes later someone will show me a stunning medieval ceramic. If you want
to discover a Romano-British dolphin brooch, get in a trench with me. A metre
away from my trowel, up comes a decorated loom weight, while I find postholes
and slingshots.

I’m not bitter—well, not much. I can see how useful I am as a marker
for other searchers. It makes the voice of Indy grow fainter. The timbers coming
up out of the mud may be less spectacular than bronze brooches, but they satisfy
me. They are working boats, the remnants of a Thames humming with life. The
pleasure boats crammed with tourists follow their trail today. That’s lucky for
you.