Like most of us I guess I had been interested in archaeology from an early age, but never really thought about how I could actually be an archaeologist. After 20 years in the NHS I needed to move to new and thought - why not something I'd always wanted to do - hence here I am today. My particular interest is in how archaeology is both used and uses material culture, and how cultures of people are represented. This could be individuals, small groups or entire civilizations. I am off to Manchester to research the impact of museum displays on visitors. I am also interested in the neolithic as it is one of the most intellectually stimulating areas in British archaeology today
Archaeology has captured my thoughts and feelings continually throughout my life . I visit the classic site, Avebury, regularly – inspiration enough in itself, and I first went there when I was 3. There in the museum lay little Charlie/Charlote, whom I watched and tried to imagine who she/he was and what they would have been like. I spent happy and imaginative days in the museum, stone circles and surrounding countryside. As a school girl, then as a teenager I undertook projects and drew pictures about the Avebury landscape. When trying to find out information for my D of E skill, I bumped into some archaeologists on Windmill Hill. The Cardiff lot where helpful and I subsequently joined them at a dig in Bossington (94). In 1996 the Southampton Archaeology department decided to give me a go and since then I have become more enthusiastic and interested in the subject, although the way in which I view the archaeology has changed somewhat! I suppose archaeology, although understood in many ways by a huge diversity of people, awakens a strange curiosity about the past and ultimately about the present.
My father used to come back from his business trips with books for me about ancient civilisations etc. and so I became interested in early history and prehistory from a very young age. When I started my undergraduate degree (in Russian language and lit) I decided that I would take the first year archaeology course as an option. It wasn't a particularly inspiring course. That summer I had planned to spend 3 months visiting family and travelling in Ireland, and one of my cousins, having heard that I had done a course in archaeology, suggested I get in touch with this man named George Eogan about this site he was digging north of Dublin. The site was Knowth and I volunteered to work there for 2 weeks, which became 6 weeks....which led to me changing my degree to a double specialist, with archaeology as the second specialisation. Even when I completed my degree, though, I was still stuck on Russian literature and thought about doing a post-graduate degree in that, but I heard about a one-year master's course (all in Canada are 2 years) you could do in archaeology in England, so ended up over here...and I've never looked back (although I do still have to fight the urge to re-read the Master and Marguerita in the original, I'm too busy for all that translation stuff - and I'm glad).This is the first Neolithic site I've been involved in (besides contract digging) since Knowth - it's nice to be back.
Excavation is quite obviously an essential part of Archaeology. Personally I love digging, it is an opportunity for me to actually experience our past in a way no amount of reading or studying can ever add up to. It’s a dirty business, that can either be cold wet and muddy or hot, dry and dusty. In either case you get hot and sweaty and end up feeling muscles you never knew you had. My first experience of Archaeological fieldwork was at a 19th century manor house on the outskirts of Manchester. It had been demolished fifty years ago and we were set to uncovering the now buried outer walls. The JCB did most of the work and we just had to brush and trowel the exposed foundations – easy! Then came Dunragit last year …… to be honest my first day was an absolute killer! The digger (JCB) had been in and taken the topsoil off three trenches. So I thought fine now we find some postholes and excavate them – true Time Team stylee!! Unfortunately no – we had to neaten up the trench edges so they were at right angles to the bottom of the trench, I discovered later that this was so we could see any soil layers (stratigraphy) that were there. This was tough work and for me backbreaking. Then we had to trowel back the trenches brush them and then shovel scrape them. This isn’t shown on the Time Team! It dawned on me then that Archaeology quite obviously isn’t the glamorous quest for our past that is portrayed on many TV programmes. I suppose I can’t moan too much about TV portryals, as to be honest the mundane pre-excavation preparation isn’t too exciting, but it does leave one a trifle unprepared for the realities of excavation. As I said earlier though I love digging. Once all of the pre-ex work is done Archaeology begins to come to life. Even by uncovering a packing stone at the bottom of a posthole can be exhilarating when you think that nobody has seen this very stone for four and a half thousand years. Obviously every archaeologist, be they a 1st year undergraduate or a hardened contract worker wants to find something. Depending on the period you are working in, this becomes more or less likely. Being now a Mesolithic and Neolithic head, I’m not going to be uncovering piles of gold and jewels (unless of course I find a dragons lair). But still the more elusive the “find” somehow the more precious it becomes – to me anyway. Truth be told to some excavation is a necessary evil, but to me it’s a welcome change to be able to get a hands on experience of the past instead of reading about it.
I want to make it quite clear from the outset Archaeology does not involve in any way Dinosaurs, Tresure Hunting or being chased out of cave mouths by a giant boulder (and that wagon wheel bars were not bigger during the Neolithic period)! It does, however, involve wearing a silly hat, even sillier jumpers, those beards, being covered in mud and living in a tent in a field in Scotland for three weeks! That’s what the Time Team fails to tell you (actually though it does show you good examples of silly hats, jumpers and those beards in abundance). In spite of what you may see on TV archaeology can be quite hard work, especially if you take into account the following factors;
Despite these little set backs Archaeology is in fact fun and challenging. We have the oportunity to look at the past for the first time in thousands of years. The socail side of excavations is also good. This year there are people from Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff and Southampton Universities mixed together. Some great people you just would’t get to meet in the Lecture theatre. So what is archaeology? Well apart from fun, for me it deals with the human past, a past which we try to gain an understanding through the piecing together of the material remains with the possible reasons for why these remains come to be, both in their used form and recovered form. That and at least I can use my new found digging skills as a second job, how about landscape gardening? Or even working for the water board digging holes in the road.
Like many people, my initial reasons for getting involved in archaeology were very romantic. I remember being taken to sites like Avebury and Maiden Castle on family holidays when I was very small, and I think that I was very attracted by mysterious and ancient places, in a nostalgic kind of way. When I was at secondary school I read Leslie Alcock's book, 'Arthur's Britain', and that encouraged me to apply for a university place in archaeology. In my first couple of years at Bradford Uni I was a pretty poor student, but I had a year out digging, which did an immense amount for my confidence. Excavation was the first bit of archaeology that I was any good at, and I still love doing it. It was also an excavation that first got me interested in the Neolithic. In 1978, 1981 and 1982 I worked on Roger Mercer's dig at the causewayed enclosure of Hambledon Hill in Dorset. It's all that that leads me to be here at Dunragit.... Julian Thomas