Author: ivan94@rattuss

Anybody remember these “Para” boots from the 80’s 90’s – almost standard foootwear on archaeological excavations until the widespread implementation of H&S and the requirement of steel toecaps led to their demise – any memories I’m looking for quotes for something I’m working on .

They were great. Good quality leather that was both thick and pliable, the tongue was a single piece of leather that somehow was joined to the boot so as not to leak – stand ankle deep in water and still be dry. They were relatively inexpensive and German (when I was younger commando soles were the go-to but British boots by the 80s were not sold). And in the early days of health and safety, when your employer demanded that you had safety boots but did not supply them (!), they would just about pass muster. I just threw a pair of Dutch para boots out, there was no tread left on them. I always went for black remembering Stanley Holloway’s monologue about someone going to a funeral in brown boots. Jamie Wright

Bought mine from an army surplus store in the now demolished monstrosity that was the Tricorn Centre in Portsmouth. Incredibly thick inflexible leather, which used to rub the base of my calf muscles, so I always only laced them to the ankle, and left the top unlaced, with my combat trousers tucked in. It’s a habit I still have to this day. Mine were ex German army, with great grip, and very comfortable, but leaked when they got too wet. I bought mine a size too big, and wore them with two pairs of socks for warmth. Eventually, as you say, we were forced to abandon them for steelies (Doc Marten 10 holes in my case). I kept the para boots for a while, but eventually one of the soles parted company from the upper, and they got discarded.

They were practically universal in archaeology in the 1980s, along with those GDR olive army surplus shirts. I also wore them with those grey green moleskin combat trousers that were also so popular. Nicholas Cooke

I remeber the difficulty when buying replacements some surplus stores stores stacked them on shelves but more frequentley they got dumped in bins and you hade to wade through mountains of them to pick a matching pair – worth it in the end but you could end up spending an afternoon in the store. Dave Webb

Wore mine through uni, then digging, then house renovations. They are probably still in the loft somewhere…. I am a size four and they were too big (5 was the smallest) so I would wear several pairs of thick socks to pad them out! Emma Firth

Paras and german army trousers was Rock n rolll uniform too so when I made the switch I was already perfectly atired. Wearing them half laced was considdered a sign they were not worn for fighting. Unkike the skinhead derivatives who wore them tightly laced in military style and adopted the charming moto “kick to kill”. Open paras were also beloved by the peace convoy and their many crusty decendents. I have always believed that para boots were referenced by the Levellers in their song The Road “with open boots, violin, banjo and a voice…”Incidentally we still refer to that greeny grey colour as “digger’s trouser”. Chris Brayne

Loved mine at uni and beyond Rachel Hall

Portraits from 2004-2016 from various sites in the Addenbrookes area – report on excavations “Cattle, community and place: the archaeology of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus” at https://repository.cam.ac.uk/collections/53d9b001-264d-44c1-9f90-143ecaea19e0 – more pics on facebook Archdiggers page at https://facebook.com/Archdiggers

After twenty two years with the CAU (Cambridge Archaeology Unit) and a lot longer with various other units and museums I’ve finally got round to retiring. Although this means I won’t have as many opportunities to continue the “Archdiggers” project I still have a large backlog in the archives to deal with.

Visits to sites has been greatly reduced during this period and diggers have had to put up with all sorts of restrictions particularly at the start of the crisis, whilst office staff started working from home, excavation continued although in a reduced form, travel to site began to take on the form of convoys, and staff ended up dispersed over the site at socially acceptable distances – tea breaks became outdoor picnics.

Whilst being fully in favour of anything that makes our working enviroment safer I have to admit orange PPE drives me to despair, its not the fact that it reduces you to a bright orange blob on site but its the tonal qualities of the material used and how they reproduce in black and white (my preferred medium) – have a look at the following example.

If you followed the link from the Must Farm diary page these are a few of the Must Farm “Archdiggers” images from the 2015-16 season of excavation, I’ll add a few images in the following days, there are also further images on Facebook and on Flickr – I’m still hoping to get the Archdiggers page re-launched but there are still problems in web design to iron out and a lack of time available.

https://www.facebook.com/Archdiggers/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/archivewebb/albums/72157691411933733

Introduction statement from first the ArchDiggers site

“My aim … was to provide an alternative view of diggers to the back of the head normally reproduced in most archaeological texts. I should say at once that there are many good archaeological photographers out there and sometimes you do have to photograph the backs of peoples heads however this project is my attempt to redress the balance and show some of the ‘faces’ involved in archaeology. Since becoming involved in archaeology I have consumed quantities of archaeological literature. The publications sometimes contained superb examples of site photography and sometimes appalling ones but for a discipline that is concerned with documenting humankinds activities it seemed to have forgotten to record itself. There were always the odd shots of people poised over some interesting find, diggers being used as human scales or the occasional end of dig team shot but very little documentary work to record the people who do the excavation.

Initially I tried following in the traditional style of documentary work however I found that the resulting images tended to illustrate an event or mood rather than the diggers themselves. Whilst working on site at Essendon in 1993 I tried a change of approach to the subject and adopted a more portrait style of recording somewhat influenced by the work of August Sanders and others. Finding that the results matched my desired aim of ‘showing the face’ of archaeological diggers I decided to continue the project in this vein whenever possible.

At first I had no outlet for my work other than showing them to friends and colleagues but in 1996 Hedley Swain (see Mirroring Reality section of site) arranged for some of the images to appear in the IFA journal The Archaeologist (Winter 1996 no 27), this led to further use of some of the images by the IFA and an exhibition of a selection of the prints at the Bournemouth T.A.G conference in 1996. Since then I have been gradually accumulating more images until I reached the point where I realised I would need to find some form of display if the images were to have any purpose, this decision led to the creation of the ArchDiggers website.”