The excavations at the V&D construction site in Gorinchem have been going on for a week and a half. Frans van Houwelingen (61) from Sliedrecht helps dig two days a week. “This is just as much fun as fishing.”
SLIEDRECHT/GORINCHEM – Three people stand around a container of soil. One of them rinses the soil with a garden hose. Two people dig through the soaked soil in search of pots, pans or parts thereof. The clay disappears through the sieve into a Gorcum canal. The finds are sorted into containers. One container contains shells, another contains bones and yet another contains pieces of pottery.
One find is even smaller than the other. Every splinter is kept. Yet it is important to keep that too, says Frans van Houwelingen. "That one seemingly unimportant piece may belong to other parts that we find," says the Sliedrechter. When we have found everything, we will glue the whole lot back together."
Van Houwelingen is one of the many volunteers helping with the excavations in the Krijtstraat in Gorinchem. In five weeks, the construction of the new department store V&D will begin there, which will open at the end of next year. Until then, excavations will be carried out at the construction site, looking for remains of the 'Court of the Lords of Arkel'. This was a powerful family in the fourteenth century.
More than that there was a 'house with outbuildings and garden' on that spot, is not known. The excavations should provide more clarity about that. 'Very little was written down about the history in the past. So we know almost nothing about it.
The fact that we now have the opportunity to dig and search here for a few weeks is a unique opportunity. If we didn't do that, you would lose it forever. The ground and everything in it is like a book. You can actually just read it."
He reaches into one of the containers and fishes out a large piece of pottery with a coat of arms, probably from a bowl or dish. “This dates from before 1300 at least, because it was only after that time that brick was baked in the Netherlands itself. Before that, everything came from Germany, Cologne in particular.”
They are the icing on the cake, because in general it is only crumbs that Van Houwelingen and his colleagues dig up from the ground. “This is just as much fun as fishing. If you don't catch anything for a long time, there is not much to it. But if you do get a bite at some point, that is of course wonderful.”
At first, the area is dug up with an excavator. Only when something is found, smaller tools are used. “Then we start working with the trowel to dig the stuff out of the ground as best we can.”
After a week and a half of digging, there is still no clarity on whether 'Het Hof van de Heeren van Arkel' was actually there. Buildings from the fifteenth century or earlier have been found, but it is not yet certain whether this is the intended building.
""That could also be from the school that used to be here," says Martin Veen of the Gorcumse Werkgroep Archeologie. "Only when we finish the terrain, we can say more. So far we have not really found anything shocking."
Besides lots of pots, pans and the like, the Krijtstraat is teeming with stones. "The trick is to discover whether they have been reused or not," says Van Houwelingen. "It happened quite often that stones used by the Romans were reused when houses were demolished, often in a completely different place."
So there is enough work, if only to photograph and register all the finds. Seven weeks is actually far too short, if it were up to Van Houwelingen. "We could stay here for seven years."
Albert Sock
August 23, 2002
The Dordrecht resident