Reader, what images do the words “tea ceremony” evoke for you? A beautiful young geisha or a white-haired old tea master kneeling on a cushion whisking frothy green tea in a priceless old bowl? Or the Chinese version, seated round a low table watching the careful steeping of fragrant tea leaves in a red clay pot, before sipping the result from minute cups? I was privileged to experience the Chinese version on one occasion myself at a wonderful tea house in Singapore called Tea Chapter, but alas, when I hear the words “tea ceremony”, a very different image tends to come into my mind.

A group of people are sprawled on barrow-boards, in wheelbarrows, or cross-legged on the ground. Oh, the relief of sitting down for fifteen minutes after several hours with a pick and shovel in the blazing sun or the pouring rain! The tea is poured out of a battered tin tea pot into mugs which are sordid in the extreme. Hot water is hard to come by, sometimes even cold water comes in plastic jerry cans, and nobody really has time to spare for thorough washing up. The experienced keep a mug clearly labelled with their name, to avoid cold sores. The tea itself is the colour of dark mahogany and we often add flavour by idly lobbing lumps of mud into each other’s cups.  This is the tea ceremony as performed on almost every British-run archaeological site I ever worked on.

Mind you, it could get even worse. I went on an awful training dig in the Western Isles of Scotland during my second year at university. It took place during the Easter vacation. We spent a fortnight outside on the seashore, digging up an Iron Age wheelhouse in the freezing wind and rain. We had to wear goggles because the wind blew the sand back into the trench as fast as we could dig it out. At morning tea break, a large boiler in a hollow in the sand dunes provided us with tea and coffee. At lunch time it provided us with synthetic soup. At afternoon tea break it provided us with soup-flavoured tea. Of course there was nowhere to wash out the boiler. The tea was warm but I do not recommend it.

On the French-run sites I worked on there was no formal tea-break and no tea. Instead we were urged to take the odd break and help ourselves to iced water and fruit from a cool-box. But when I was working with a French team in the Lebanon, we were taken to visit the museum in Damascus in Syria. After we had been given a guided tour of the museum, we were served glasses of the most wonderful mint tea I have ever tasted. I have been trying without success to recreate the taste for the last fifty years.

I think I’ll go and put the kettle on…..