I’m crouched down in a deep trench; loose khaki pants and a sheepskin coat shield me from the post-dawn chill. My boots are pressing into dank mud beside a rickety wooden ladder. The trench I’m in is deep. Behind my ankles there is a trench, deeper still, plunging another ten metres or so. My legs ache from persisting in the same position but I can’t afford to dance around when I don’t know what might be lying beneath the surface. I can’t wait for breakfast.

Suddenly someone shouts with excitement and I scramble up the rickety ladder. I delicately pick my way across the top of a temple wall until I reach the milling figures. Someone is delicately brushing dust away from in front of their feet. Emerging in patterned brilliance is a tiled mosaic floor. It’s pale, it’s beautiful, it’s two thousand years old…and it’s far more exciting than breakfast.

It was a travel experience of a lifetime practicing the very down-to-earth occupation of archaeology. I had joined archaeologists and other volunteers from Sydney University to assist with the excavation of an ancient temple site in the gloriously green hills of Pella in Jordan. The  of murmuring voices, shovels clanking against stone, the squeak of wheelbarrows as they were trundled away, and the bellowing of  nearby cows were a time-worn melody at Pella. Naturally, the painstaking scraping, recording and measuring led to the coveted event of making a ‘find’. My long-hoped-for find was a solitary glass bead. However, after excavating muddy bits of stone and potsherds for weeks on end this tiny crafted jewel was tantamount to discovering the treasure of Monte Cristo.

Volunteering on a ‘dig’ lets you discover a foreign place in two dimensions – the past as well as the present - it’s also one of the more responsible means of travel. At Pella, our presence provided employment for local men and the village economy benefited from our weekly excursions to the store for sweets and postcards. We lived simply, eating local produce cooked and served by a local and we were judiciously frugal with precious water and electricity supplies. 

Anyone can volunteer on an archaeological dig provided they have a genuine interest in cultural heritage, are willing to live a bit ‘rough’ for a few weeks, are a team player and can make a financial contribution toward the project. You need to plan well in advance and to provide a reference. In most cases, learning the lingua franca is necessary because archaeologists tend to lurk in places where English is about as useful as tits on a bull.

The magic of being on a dig makes it all worthwhile; there's the excitement of discovery but it also lends a greater sense of purpose than simply ‘sightseeing’. And besides, you just never know what you might dig up.