EntriesArchaeology and Me!
I was a student at the University of Queensland (UQ), located in Brisbane, Australia when I literally stumbled across a course in Anthropology and Archaeology. Well one thing led to another and in early 2000 I graduated with a PhD. in Archaeology.
During my time at UQ I was fortunate enough to go into the field on many occasions in many parts of Australia, including the Whitsunday Islands on the Great Barrier Reef, far northwestern Australia, the desert regions of Queensland and three trips to the Mayan Ruins located in Copan, Honduras. Some of these projects were basic surveys while others were full blown excavations. In the photo at the left I’m the guy kneeling down in the front with the white t-shirt.
While the vast majority were of a prehistoric nature I have also been involved in a number of excavations of historic sites. One of these was the excavation of an gold mining town that was deserted in the early 1900’s, a Lazaret of the coast of Brisbane and Brisbane’s historic Tower Mill.
Since moving to the USA in 1999 I have been out in the field on a few occasions in Oklahoma. These have primarily been Stage I and Stage II surveys. However, I was also lucky enough to spend a week excavating at the Jakes Bluff in northwestern Oklahoma with a field school from Oklahoma University.
If there’s two things that really stand out in my career it’s these.
- You get to hang out with some absolutely wonderful people who share a similar passion. If nothing else you will make friendships that will last a lifetime.
-
There is nothing like holding an artefact in your hand that is thousands of years old. I remember the first time this happened to me. I was on my second dig at a place called Cooloola on the Queensland coast and we had just uncovered a stone tool. After this tool had been removed the guy running the dig (Ian McNiven or Macca) handed me this tool and said to stop and think about the following. First it came from a level that was 5000 years old. Second, the area did not look anything like what it does now (sand dunes and the ocean a couple of hundred yards away). Third, and this is what really hit home that the last hand to touch this stone tool had been black and most likely a woman’s! Immediately I started thinking to myself, who was this woman, why did she leave this tool here, how old was she, did she have any children, did she plan to come back for it and something happened that stopped her? Questions we’ll never really know the answer to but:
Even now, after 20 years of being an archaeologist I still find myself asking similar questions when I find an artefact. For me this is what archaeology is all about, the people who left all this stuff lying about. Who were they?
If you’ve ever considered archaeology as a career go ahead take the plunge. It’s a wonderful lifestyle especially if you don’t mind getting dirty and like to drink the occasional beer. But let me warn you it ain’t like Indiana Jones. The closest I’ve come to anything that even faintly resembles an Indy movie is being in the tunnels excavated by archaeologists under the pyramids in Copan. There were even bats!