“Not Roman?” von Alvensleben snarled. “Who would bother if it isn’t Roman?” He paused for a moment, peering intently into the excavation square. “Gold! You have information about coin hordes. Where are the coins?” He drew himself up, face flushed; the riding crop in his right hand beating a tattoo against his boot.
“We haven’t found any coins and I don’t think that we will,” Mike protested. “We’re digging here because no one knows who built these walls.”
“Do you think we are stupid? If this isn’t a Roman ruin,” Clausnitzer growled, “then the only reason to dig here is that you know of other valuable items buried here.” The little man glared at Mike and added, “Who do you mistake us for?”
“He mistakes us for fools,” Glasewaldt said. “To be taken in by a few pieces of broken pottery he’s picked up from a village’s trash pit. Show us what you’ve really found. If not coins, perhaps marble statues?”
Mike’s temper rose. Yesterday they had seemed to understand that archaeology was about knowledge, not finding treasure. These broken bits of pottery told him more about the inhabitants than a gold coin could. He fought to keep his voice even.
“There aren’t any statues or gold coins or anything of monetary value here. If there ever was anything like that. Anything valuable was taken when this place was abandoned.”
“Don’t think that you can fool us. Herr Clausnitzer has the right of it. Either this place is Roman or there is something of value hidden here. You must have secret knowledge about this place,” von Alvensleben snapped. “I see nothing more than a pile of rocks pulled from the fields. An old house or barn, perhaps. What sources do you have? How did you know that there was Roman treasure hidden here?” The whip continued its staccato beat on his boot.
“I said it isn’t Roman. The stone work on the remaining walls does look like Roman work, but we’re well outside the area that the Romans controlled. The original builders might have had some contacts with the Romans.” Mike offered the red bowl again. “This Roman pottery indicates that at some point there was contact or trade with the Romans.”
“Trash! You’ve shown us nothing but bits of worthless trash!” Von Alvensleben reached out and knocked the remains of the bowl to the ground. His booted foot smashed down on it, shattering it into tiny pieces.
“Get the hell off my site,” Mike snarled. His temper rose and his hands curled into fists. Inside he was amazed at himself. He knew that he’d grown over the last three years-from the smallest boy in his classes to one of the tallest-and that work in his mother’s garden and on this dig had widened his shoulders and added muscle but…Memories of being repeatedly pounded into the ground by the Colburn twins made him avoid fights. Looking at von Alvensleben Mike realized that he topped the man by two inches and at least twenty pounds. At this moment he wanted nothing more than to wipe the sneer off the man’s face. Red-faced, von Alvensleben stared at Mike, then whirled and strode off toward the hotel surrey. Clausnitzer and Glasewaldt exchanged glances and hurried after him. Ernst von Weferling stood calmly, looking slightly amused.
The surrey’s driver frowned at Mike. Five men had ridden out from the hotel and he was expecting four to ride back. He was probably hoping for additional tips. Unhappy passengers were unlikely tippers.
“Sir,” Mike addressed von Weferling politely. “Do you wish to go back, too?”
“Certainly there is a horse I can rent in the village.” Von Weferling smiled tightly. He waved the surrey away and watched as it moved off. He turnd back and said, “I’d like to have you explain more about this archaeological site without the extraneous commentary from the ignorant and ill-informed. Clausnitzer and Glasewaldt have little learning and less Latin. Alvensleben is a complete fraud.” Von Weferling paused and looked around. “How certain are you that this isn’t a Roman villa? Their writings indicate that they were hundreds of miles from here but if you’ve found Roman pottery…”
“The style of stonework looks like pictures I’ve seen of Roman walls and I’m pretty sure that the red pottery is Roman. However, as you said, there aren’t any records that show Roman settlements in this area. It could have been built years or centuries after the Romans. The Roman bowl might have been traded for or part of a collection of curiosities. Ask me again in a couple of years and I might have an answer.” Mike shrugged. There was so much that he didn’t know, so much information that had been lost. So much had to be relearned.
“Up-time,” he continued, “they could figure out who had lived in a place at different times from the pottery.”
“My researchers tell me that you have only bits and pieces of archaeological knowledge. I’ve read a precis of the theory of identifying pottery but I understood that there are only a few pictures of identified pottery in the library.”
“Yes, sir. But we lucked out on the Roman stuff. Back up-time, one of my girlfriend’s cousins visited Germany. She toured a well documented excavation-a Roman villa rustica.” Mike grinned widely. “It had been partly restored as a museum. Lannie picked up a couple of brochures and saved them. Along with pictures of the stonework there were pictures of Roman pottery. We have to rebuild the pottery databases but we aren’t starting completely from scratch. At least not for the Roman stuff. For now we save every pottery sherd, document where it came from, measure it and try to match it to other sherds to see if we can figure out what the whole piece looked like. If it comes out of the same level or is close to a piece that we think is Roman, we mark it as possibly Roman. Or at least possibly from the Roman period. Someday someone will know if we’ve gotten the designations right. For now, your guess as to who built this place is as good as mine. Ten, twenty, or a hundred years from now someone may figure it out from the pottery.”
“Ah, you are looking years ahead. That is good. I’ve a cousin at the university in Jena who might be interested in discussing archaeology with you. Now, that pair of green flags, do you think that might have been a gate?’
“It seems to be in the right location for one. We haven’t managed to trace the wall completely so we don’t yet know if it encloses the site. That’s one of things I’m trying to establish. Whenever it was built and whoever built it, it looks like it was a farm complex. The location’s wrong for a fort and the layout so far seems to follow that of a villa rustica. If that’s right then there should be a house, a couple of workshops, at least one barn, and quarters for slaves and servants-all enclosed by a wall.”
“How did it go today?” Rob Clark handed Mike a cold bottle of root beer. “Try this while you tell me.”
“One out of four listened and seemed to understand.” Mike smiled sardonically. “Not a great start for the establishment of real archaeology as opposed to pot and treasure hunting.” He sat down on the porch swing and took a swig. “Not bad, Rob, not bad at all. Tastes kind of like the way I remember A amp;W did. Is it a new product?”
“One out of four is a far better ratio than I’ve had trying to convince people that training horses does not require the extensive use of whips. Part of our problem is our ages. It’s hard for anyone to accept that we could know more about a subject than the older folks.” Rob sipped his root beer. “Yeah, this is by a new brew master in town. He’s looking for something different. We’ve got to have twenty, maybe thirty guys brewing beer. One more doesn’t stand much of a chance against that kind of competition.”
“So you set him up, huh?” Mike leaned back, holding the cold bottle against his face. “What else is he trying?”
“Root beer’s the start. Got the recipe from an old cookbook somebody gave the library. I figure just the root beer alone should do well.”