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Let's take a break - Ep 35
130 Plays10 days ago
This episode is a little different to usual, as Matilda discusses her background in archaeology and how she got to where she is today, as well as her inspiration for starting the podcast and how her experience has been for the last two years. Most importantly, she ends with the announcement that due to personal and professional priorities, Tea-break Time Travel will be taking a break, to launch with a fresh season-centered format in September 2025.
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/teabreak/35
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Setup
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. um You're listening to Tea Break Time Travel, where every month we look at a different archaeological object and take you on a journey into their past.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 35 of Tea Break Time Travel. I am your host Dr. Matilda Ziebrecht and today I'm savouring a very delicious salted caramel, rooibos and black tea combo with just a dash of milk which is very lovely. I probably shouldn't be having black tea at this point because it is evening and really I should be trying to cut down on black tea. I know it's not like coffee. I know it's not quite that caffeinated, but you know, still it's enough for me, a little tea drinker that I am. but And today I am not joined by a guest. However, this is also not going to be an episode of Tea Break Time Travel Training because I have very important announcement to make
00:01:01
Speaker
And I wanted to expand a little bit on some points. So this is going to be a little bit of a different episode to usual, but don't worry, it will make sense and you will understand why it's going to be a different episode as we continue.
Podcast Journey and Evolution
00:01:13
Speaker
So first of all, I can't believe this is already at 35 episodes. That's kind of crazy. I mean, the fact that I only do these as monthly episodes, I know a lot of the other shows on the Archaeology Podcast Network do shows weekly or biweekly. I have now started doing it biweekly, of course, but At the start, I just did this as a monthly episode. And so because of that, even though I've been going for like three years nearly now, I actually only have 35 episodes, which I guess isn't actually that much. But it's a lot for me. I can't believe that I'm already at episode 35, which is crazy.
00:01:46
Speaker
So something, though, that I have noticed. So I want to give a little bit of a background on why I started this podcast, what my actual archaeological background is, because I realised that throughout the course of this podcast, I haven't really talked about myself at all, a little bit, of course, through conversations with guests or through other discussions. But I wanted to expand a little bit on my own experience, why I decided to start this podcast and why I am now going to be taking a little bit of a break.
Academic Background and Interests
00:02:15
Speaker
from this particular podcast. So, to start with, ah hello everyone, my name is Matilda and I'm an archaeologist. Specifically, yeah I am a pre-historian and I am a materials specialist.
00:02:31
Speaker
I did my undergrad at Aberdeen University, which is in Scotland. and The degree that I did was called Archaeology of the North, so it basically looked at northern cultures. so I specialised in, for example, prehistoric Scotland, in Scandinavian ah cultures, in northern Siberian cultures, in North American cultures. So, Aberdeen University was a really great university. I don't know if it's still like this or I don't know if every university that offers an undergraduate degree in archaeology is like this, but the nice thing was it was very broad, the degree. So, it offered all kinds of different um overviews and sort of specialisms, depending on kind of what you were interested in. So, I
00:03:16
Speaker
was able to specialise in northern cultures. That was kind of the cultural specialism, but in terms of everything else, we had courses in archaeological theory, we had archaeological fieldwork, we had archaeological science specifically, and that was what really drew my interest. So we had geoarchaeology, zooarchaeology, osteoarchaeology, and then we had some really fascinating classes on material sciences and material culture studies.
00:03:42
Speaker
And that got me really interested in objects and sort of object analysis. So this was something that I thought I would like to pursue further. I mean, to be honest, there were so many things I was interested in. I was also doing scuba diving. And so I really wanted to get into maritime archaeology. I really enjoyed doing the sort of more theoretical side of things. I really enjoyed, I don't know, so many different aspects. The problem is, of course, as anyone who gets into archaeology will discover, there's just so much you can do and there's no way to specialise in everything.
00:04:12
Speaker
So at some point, unfortunately, you do have to kind of pick a path for yourself. The path I decided to pick for myself was material culture's specialism. Material culture, just to clarify, is basically the kind of tangible cultural heritage of a particular culture. Physical objects, basically, is is the kind of material culture. and It's called material culture because it is material. It's made up of materials and objects, but it is almost considered to kind of represent or define a culture.
00:04:45
Speaker
which is a bit of an old-fashioned view, to be honest, at this point, but that's where the terminology comes from. That's where the idea comes from. It's sort of a culture encapsulated in materials. so In order to do this, I looked around to see what other universities specialised in kind of materials analysis and scientific analysis. I was particularly interested in the start of metallurgy. That was kind of my first real fascination when it came to materials and archaeological science. I wanted to look at the start of metallurgy, when metal started to be used, how that developed, etc. So, for my undergraduate degree, my thesis looked at Viking-age metalworking techniques.
00:05:25
Speaker
which was really fascinating. And I'm so indebted to my wonderful supervisor, Dr. Karen Millik, who works a lot in Iceland on Viking Age sites. And she had a fantastic site for me that I was able to use as the base for my thesis. And also I'm indebted to Dave Budd, who is an experimental archaeologist and professional blacksmith. So he was able to help me with my experiments. And that is also how I got into experimental archaeology.
00:05:53
Speaker
which has now formed a huge part of my life. and I distinctly remember actually going to a supervisory meeting to discuss what my thesis would be and the sort of thesis coordinator was saying, oh you know what are you interested in in terms of archaeology? and I said, oh I really love experimental archaeology because we had also done some courses on that and they were by far the most fun of all the courses we did.
00:06:17
Speaker
for me. And I said, oh, but you know, of course, I guess I can't do that as a thesis topic. And she said, what are you talking about? Of course you could do that as a thesis topic, which I was going, really? Which, you know, is just going into that old stereotype that experimental archaeology is not real archaeology, which is false. It is real archaeology. Just you have to set it up in terms of experiments and you have to keep in mind that it is a scientific methodology and approach, but that means you have to maintain scientific principles when you do it. Anyway, that's a rant for another day. Point being, I was into experimental archaeology, I was into materials, I was interested in the start of metallurgy. So I wanted to specialise in archaeological science and specifically materials science, because there's a couple of different paths you can take if you're going into archaeological science. So you can go down the kind of Osteo-Archaeology archaeological route, the zoo archaeological route, you could go in archaeobotany, you could go in geoarchaeology, there's all kinds of things you could go into. So I wanted to look at materials. And I found an excellent course at Leiden University in the Netherlands, called an archaeological course in archaeological science specialising in material culture studies.
00:07:17
Speaker
I thought that sounds ideal. And they also, you had to do kind of a secondary specialism as well, particular preferably in sort of a culture or something, a region, a time period. So I chose a prehistoric Northwest Europe, which kind of fit a little bit with my existing knowledge on kind of Northern cultures.
Choosing Advanced Studies
00:07:38
Speaker
So, I went on to do that and within the master's track that I was doing, a lot of what's really interesting about kind of the way that your research goes, particularly if you're at sort of undergraduate or master's sort of postgraduate level, is the type of research projects that you can do are so dependent on the existing knowledge within the department that you're in. so For example, for me, I happened to have some amazing lecturers and postdoctoral researchers and professors who were specialised in particular topics. and so Therefore, you could pick kind of one of those topics to specialise in. And this is why whenever anyone asks me like, oh, how do you recommend approaching a PhD or a master's or something like that? I would always say, think of what you are interested in and look for a university that has people who are interested in the same thing. Like if it's a very niche topic that you're interested in and you want to do, because your thesis supervisor will have to have some kind of idea about what you're doing. You can't, it'll be really difficult if you pick something that's completely niche and off the rails and that nobody in the department knows about.
00:08:44
Speaker
So yes, on that note, I had kind of two basic options, that i could very broad options, that i could that I could follow. I could do techniques of artifact analysis, which included all kinds of very fascinating ways of analysing the kind of chemical compositions of objects, looking more at the materials in terms of kind of their actual make up and that's that side of scientific analysis and there's all kinds of really cool things you can do with that. You can sort of look at identifying forgeries, you can go into conservation, you can do all sorts of things. And I think I'm going to do the next series of tea break time travel training focusing on some of those aspects because I find them really fascinating and really interesting.
00:09:26
Speaker
And the other way that I could have gone, which I did choose, was to look at microwave analysis. So, microwave analysis, those of you who have listened to a couple of the episodes should be aware that microwave analysis looks at microscopic traces of manufacture and use that you can see on the surface of an object. So, you require microscopes in order to see these traces, and it basically tells us how objects in the past were made and were used.
00:09:52
Speaker
So I chose this route because there was some fantastic professors, Professor Anne-Louvain Rhein, who is one of the names in micro-ware analysis oh in the world, I would say. I was lucky enough that she happened to still be, she's retired now, but she was still going strong at the department when I was there.
00:10:11
Speaker
And there was also a fantastic postdoctoral researcher called Dr k Christina Soraki, who was my sort of day-to-day supervisor and she was amazing. Christina, if you're listening, thank you so much for making my life a lot easier than it would otherwise have been in that case.
00:10:30
Speaker
And so those were my wonderful supervisors for my thesis. And so I decided to specialise for my actual thesis topic. I looked at Amber Beads of the Northern Netherlands and I looked again, I was trying to sort of go down the road of the start of metallurgy and how that happened and kind of how metal, the first evidence of metal in the archaeological record, because what's really interesting is, of course, metal can be easily recycled, right? It can be melted down and used again. So the first metal objects that we see in the archaeological record might not necessarily herald the start of metallurgy because they might be like recycled objects, you know?
00:11:09
Speaker
This was the sort of logic that I was following, so I wanted to look instead not at the metal objects themselves, but at the traces left by metal tools on other kinds of objects and materials. So I looked at amber beads, and I looked at the perforations, so the holes through the beads, and I tried to identify whether these holes could have been made using metal drill bits. And that would then be a sort of indirect way of identifying the presence of metal in the archaeological record, in the ground.
00:11:38
Speaker
which yeah was great fun. Lots of experiments, lots of drilling beads. I had lots of different drill bits from flint and antler and bone and wood, I think, as well, and metal. and yeah What was really interesting is that you could really compare the traces on my experimental pieces with the traces that you saw in the archaeological record. so It was indeed possible to look at the reference collection that I was creating and with all these different different holes created by different materials, and the traces were very distinct depending on the material. they were You could really sort of suggest, and again, that you can never in archaeology say, yes, this proves, but you know you could strongly suggest, based on the evidence, that indeed
00:12:20
Speaker
These drill perforations on the archaeological objects could be indicative of a material similar to one of the materials used in the experiments, because the traces left were very similar. So that was great. That was exciting. And then I sort of fell in love with microwave analysis. And then I went a little bit off track. I sort of left the metallurgy route, and I haven't really gone back to it, to be honest.
00:12:40
Speaker
But i I kind of wandered off and started looking indeed at other kinds of ways. I focused on beads for a long time, looking at how they were made, looking at you swear traces within beads, that kind of thing. And then, yeah, I wanted to to continue. My problem was, I wanted you to continue with a PhD.
00:12:59
Speaker
and I was initially looking at continuing my research into kind of ornaments, beads, that kind of thing, but the difficult thing was finding a sort of ah selection of objects that I could use as a case study for my research. So that was something that I was struggling to find.
00:13:18
Speaker
and Luckily, I got lucky. and After many years of being kind of outside archaeology, I worked as an English teacher, I had a business selling jewellery, I did all kinds of things.
Career Transitions and Podcasting
00:13:30
Speaker
I was lucky enough to see a PhD position come past that I applied for, which was looking at Arctic archaeology. and They basically wanted someone to look at Arctic material culture.
00:13:41
Speaker
in a particular way. They didn't specify how it was up to the applicant to sort of write a proposal of how that would happen. And I thought dick Arctic material is fantastically well preserved because it's frozen, so it's basically preserved for all time, so you can have all these amazing objects like the organic material culture, so antler, bone, ivory, etc., which is very plentiful in Arctic material cultural assemblages, so in in sort of Arctic objects There are a lot of ancient Arctic objects made from, for example, bone, antler, ivory, et cetera. And that would be a fantastic kind of assemblage to have a case study for applying microwave analysis. They would be perfect for it. So I applied. And luckily, I have my background in cultures of the north. I had already done during my undergrad some courses on you know North American archaeology. And I had my specialism in microwave analysis.
00:14:36
Speaker
and ah Luckily, I got the position, which was a fantastic. and so That was how my PhD started, looking at paleo-innuit material culture from the Canadian Arctic, ah specifically focusing on the organic material culture. so I looked at all kinds of different things. I looked at needles, I looked at harpoon heads, I looked at these adorable little figurines.
00:14:57
Speaker
um If you're interested in in seeing more, I'll put a link to my academia page and you can see all of the papers that I've written which are open access hopefully. one of There's only one which is unfortunately not currently open access because to be honest I couldn't afford to pay the open access fees because I'd finished my contract at that point so I would have had to pay the thousand euros out of my own pocket and to be honest I did not have that money. but so yeah so i That was how I kind of continued. to And then, since finishing my PhD, I have gone away from the research side of things, from the academia side of things. I now do very different work, but I am still involved with kind of objects, analysis, object interpretation, and I hope to go back to it at some point. I really miss doing ah doing research and doing analysis on objects, so I'm really hoping to go back to it at some point.
00:15:46
Speaker
But yeah, that's just a little brief overview of my kind of research background and how I got to where I was at the point I started the podcast. We're going to have a very quick break. And then when we come back, I'll talk a little bit more about my kind of reason for starting the podcast and my reason for wanting to take a little bit of a break now. See you then. Welcome back, everyone.
00:16:08
Speaker
so Now I wanted you to chat a little bit more about my kind of my wish to create the podcast and how that all came about. so Actually, my first podcasting experience was with EXARC, which is the International Society for Experimental Archaeology, Ancient Technologies, Open Air Museums, and Heritage Interpretation.
00:16:28
Speaker
And I have been a member of EXARC for a while now. I've also been a volunteer at EXARC for a while now. And so at some point, they asked me, they were interested in starting a podcast. This was during the pandemic. it was The sort of original aim of it was to try to provide something for the EXARC members to kind of have as a bit of a community building. So we would do live recordings.
00:16:53
Speaker
so that ex-ARC members could join and ask questions and all that kind of thing, which was really great and we'd have guests on. And I had also done a journalism degree alongside my PhD, which I didn't mention, but yes, basically at some point when I wasn't finding a PhD position, I had a bit of an existential crisis and thought, okay, well, if I can't do archaeology, because I just am not finding paid positions, what would I want to do? And I've always enjoyed writing and communication. And so I thought I will do journalism. And I'd also been working for, I'd been volunteering for a English language radio station in the Netherlands. I really loved it doing reporting and news reading and all that kind of stuff. So I thought, yeah, let's do journalism. So I also applied for a journalism, a postgraduate diploma from the London School of Journalism, and I happened to get into it. But then also like two weeks later, I discovered that I had also got the PhD position at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. So luckily, you could do the postgraduate diploma virtually. So I did it over two years.
00:17:49
Speaker
virtually rather than in person, which would have been more intense and condensed. But yeah, so I had that experience, that journalism experience, I had the archaeological experience. So EXARC asked me if I would be interested in hosting their new podcast, which I said yes. And it was really interesting, and it gave me a great insight into kind of the world of podcasting. And actually, yeah, I still post some of the EXARC show, which is the EXARC podcast, but I have backed down a little bit for the same reason that I will be backing down a bit from this one, which I'll get to soon.
00:18:20
Speaker
But yes, and one of those reasons actually is because I am now the director of EXARC. So it's funny what volunteering and what helping out can get you in a lot of situations. Volunteer as much as possible, gag, because it might lead you to a job at some point.
00:18:34
Speaker
so That was my kind of first foray into podcasting, but I decided, you know what, i really I like this podcast, I like the format it is, but I would really love to do something of podcasts which focuses on objects, because I wanted to share my love of kind of objects and artefacts and the different ways that we can look at different materials in the past. and I thought, wouldn't it be great to start a podcast looking at that? So, I contacted the Archaeology Podcast Network, and I proposed the show, and yeah they were very happy to have me, which was great. You had to you know pre-record a lot of episodes. You had to plan a lot of episodes in advance to kind of show that you knew what you were doing. and I was very on top of things back then. I managed to pre-record lots of stuff and I managed to be really on top of my schedule, which was great.
00:19:19
Speaker
And yeah, and that is how it all kind of started. And now we're on to episode 35. And then I also co-host another podcast series on the Archaeology Podcast Network called Am I Trowel, which is co-hosted with the wonderful Ashley Airy. If you're interested in listening to that, it's for lovers of fantasy fiction and archaeology. We kind of do an intersection of fantasy worlds and archaeology, kind of Dungeons and Dragons-esque,
00:19:43
Speaker
um looking at all sorts of different things in archaeology and how that can go. so If you're interested in that, do go and check it out. It's it's good fun. And so, yeah, my main sort of incentive behind continuing this podcast was to try and be involved with different forms of science communication. I was very active on social media already as a kind of science communicator. I was doing little reels, focusing on different objects. I have a lot of replicas and each reel would talk for just a minute about each object. And it was kind of this, and they became very popular. And this was what prompted me to think of the idea for kind of expanding those reels into podcast episodes.
00:20:20
Speaker
and so I just want to have a very quick look at kind of where we've been with that and all of the kind of different, oh, episode, sorry, I'm just looking. Yes, so 2022 was when it started. And actually, funnily enough, even though it's episode two,
00:20:38
Speaker
The first episode that I recorded was episode two of Flame From My Heart to Yours with Ashley Aerie, who is now my co-host, because she is the wonderful owner and director of Ashwood Candles, which if you don't know about them, you should. I will put the link in the show notes. It's amazing. They do candles inspired by archaeological sites. It's fantastic. And Ashley is the creative mind behind it all.
00:21:02
Speaker
So, but episode one was The Soul of the Object with the amazing Sarah Lord from Potted History, which if you don't know Potted History, again, you should. Talking about the Venus of Dolby Metz-Zionice, and it just was everything that I wanted it to be. It was looking at an object, focusing on an object, but looking at it in terms of its context and in terms of the history around an object. Because one of the problems a lot of the time with these ancient objects and with artifacts is that people get very caught up in the object itself, but they see it just in isolation. They think of it just as an independent object, but of course nothing is independent. Everything is linked to everything else. This is something called kind of network interaction theory, which I will definitely do a
00:21:45
Speaker
tea break time travel training episode on at some point in the future. But it's that idea that nothing kind of lives in isolation and everything has some sort of connection. Think of it as a massive spider's web. but You can't sort of have all of these different things and going on without there being something holding it all together and also without there being a spider, but which is also something else that a lot of people forget that there's these objects, but at some point someone made that object. At some point someone used that object. it's not just an object to sit in a museum. and I think one of the main issues with that is how we've been kind of programmed to see objects from the past. We see them in their final kind of polished state, sitting in a little museum case, and it's very difficult to think of them as actual living objects in that respect. But that's something that I i wanted to kind of
00:22:31
Speaker
change through through the discussions that I was having in the in this podcast. And so I was really happy that that was happening. We were talking about the objects, but we were also talking about the societies around the objects. We were talking about, for example, the history of the oldest clay and how that even started and all that kind of thing. Episode two looked at candles um and the sort of earliest candles, the development of candles through time, which was also really interesting.
00:22:57
Speaker
And then it was something completely different with Forge's fieldwork and frying pans, episode three, with Dr. Zek Jynx Frederick, who is the creative genius behind Anvil and You, Blacksmithing Forge. Again, check him out. And yeah, we talked about trowels, the archaeological trowel, but also even that. We went into a deep dive in terms of metalworking and and all of that kind of thing.
00:23:21
Speaker
Episode four looked at the Pictish Beastie, which is a symbol, technically not an object, I know, but it was something that has always fascinated me. And I luckily had the amazing Pictish expert Hamish Findy-Lamley, who is the owner of Pictavia leather.
00:23:37
Speaker
to talk all about that. And again, to sort of do a bit of myth busting about pix and talk about yeah the context of the pix and how that is so important to interpreting these objects and these finds. And then episode five, Social Media By Faces was with the amazing David Ian Howe, who now has his own show here on the Archaeology Podcast Network, Ethnocyanology, looking all about the history of kind of human-animal interactions, specifically human-dog interactions, but he also goes into a bit more detail with different things. And that episode looked at arrowheads, because even though David's known for dogs, he actually did a lot of his research on projectiles and so arrowheads and similar objects.
00:24:16
Speaker
And then i I carried on with the theme of of weapons um for episode six with my amazing colleague, who is now Dr.
Podcast Content and Guest Reflections
00:24:24
Speaker
Valerio Gentile, who looks at bronze swords. Oh, he looked at bronze swords. Now he looks at sort of bronze.
00:24:31
Speaker
and weapons in general. and He is also does useware analysis, so that was really interesting and really fun to kind of talk with him about that. have Episode 7, Medieval Office Chairs, which the he sort of fun fact behind that, it wasn't even a fun fact, it was more just kind of a funny comment. We were talking about how Wooden wheels was the topic of this episode that I chatted with Christopher Wakefield, who works for the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, which has recently been involved in the excavation of Must Farm, which is an incredible site. Definitely check it out if you haven't already. and What was funny about this episode was talking about kind of perceptions that we have. So if you think of like wooden objects or wooden furniture, that was what it was. We were talking about wooden furniture and then the sort of crazy idea that you would have office furniture, like what we would consider office furniture, but in medieval times. So like an office chair with wooden wheels or something. Because oh, that's right. One of the commonly asked questions was, did furniture have wheels? Anyway,
00:25:36
Speaker
And then episode eight, I chatted with another of my colleagues, Pierre Herbert. ah from the University of Groningen, which is was looking at ah flint blades. And this is also something that I try to do each time. Each time I always ask about the background and the history of the person that I'm interviewing, because it's so different each time. The path that took them to where they were and the experience that they've had is always so different. And I hope to also kind of use this podcast to show that a little bit. So looking at the way that you get to a final point in archaeology or anything related, there's no kind of one way to do it. There's no right way to do it. so I also always try to get the guests to talk a little bit about their experience, specifically in the third section. We talk a little bit more about how they got to where they are, what they wish they'd know when they started. so This episode, for example, looked at how to prepare for a PhD and all of those kinds of things as well.
00:26:29
Speaker
So we're going to churn through a few more because otherwise this will take too long. But um episode nine, the amazing Dr. Colleen Darnell, who is a famous Egyptologist and a very well-known social media influencer as well. And she ah was talking about Stelae, which interestingly enough,
00:26:46
Speaker
I had originally asked her to talk about, I can't even remember what it was, something else. And then we were just chatting and she said, oh, it would be really interesting to um look at this delay, actually, they're really fascinating. And so I've, you know, got this book coming out, of back and that and we can talk about that. And so that's also kind of fun to see how the podcast sort of evolves and changes as well.
00:27:05
Speaker
And then episodes 10 and episodes 11 were from the incredible team at Ancient Craft UK and Prehistoric Jewelry. So episode 10 was from Emma Jones, talking about the folk and drums, so which was a really fun episode, really enjoyed that one. And episode 11 was with Dr. James Dilly, her partner in life and work.
00:27:25
Speaker
which was talking about axes, and I think one of my favourite titles, All We Know Is We Know Nothing, because the aim of that episode was basically to show how we really have no idea what happened in prehistory. Cut to a very different kind of episode in episode 12, where I chatted to Samuel Merrick, who is an amazing metalsmith who makes carnuses, which are the those incredible Celtic brass trumpets which you might have seen in, for example, Brave, the Disney film. so We were talking about music and that kind of thing. so it's just i mean The people that I have had on on the episodes, I'm just amazed at how many people I've been able to talk to and what experiences I've learned, because it's just it's been so fascinating and it's been so fun to learn about.
00:28:12
Speaker
Episode 13 was part of the second of the two-person team from Potter history, Graham Taylor, who's an expert Potter and came to talk all about bell beakers, which is one of those objects that you sort of think you know everything about and then you get someone like Graham on and realise you actually know nothing.
00:28:29
Speaker
nothing. Episode 14, similar, talking about talks, which again, you would think, yeah, talk. It's those cool, thick necklaces, right? I know about them, but you don't until you've chatted with Dr. Tess Mackling and talked all about them for ah for that length of time. And then The next one, episode 15, it was actually another colleague of mine, Femke Reizmo, soon to be Dr. Femke Reizmo, hopefully, fingers crossed, Femke, who is a specialist in kind of ancient fire and the first sort of evidence of fire in the archaeological record. And we were chatting about it one day and she was saying, yeah, I mean i would argue that fire is an object, like fire is a as a tool.
00:29:12
Speaker
So we thought, all right, let's make an episode about it. So that was also how that one came about, which was fascinating. And episode 16 was with the wonderful Rania Lau, who is a textiles archaeologist. And so we talked about needles, which was very close to my heart at this point, because I was fully into my PhD research project, which was looking at needles at this time as well. So that was a really interesting episode to chat about, but she does a very different part of the world in a very different time period. So it was really fun to compare those things. And then episode 17, I had been trying to find someone to talk about the Scottish Carved Stone Balls with me for so long. And luckily, ah Professor Andrew Marion Jones was kind enough to come and talk to me. To be honest, I think I'm going to try and see if I can do a second episode on the Scottish Carved Stone Balls because there's just so much to say, so much to say. But so yeah, that was
00:30:03
Speaker
Also, one of my favourite episodes, just because they're my favourite object type, the Scottish Carved Stone Balls, they're just really cool. I'm actually hoping to do a kind of video lecture series on them at some point, so watch out for more information on that in the future. And then episode 18 looked at something which I knew absolutely nothing about, the Beotapestry. It's one of those things that you, again, you think you know what it is, but then chatting with an actual professional embroiderer and textile archaeologist, such as Dr. Alexandra Macon, who not only is a professional embroider, but is actually recreating different panels from the Beo Tapestry. So yes, talking with her really kind of opened my eyes to the context and the sort of complexity surrounding the Beo Tapestry.
00:30:52
Speaker
And then episode 19 was with the fantastic TK, who is host of the podcast for the love of history, who I met through social media. And then she lives in Japan and she knows a lot about Japanese history and prehistory. So I asked her if she would be interested in coming on my podcast and talking about Netsuke.
00:31:10
Speaker
which are very cute little objects that we used in the past instead of pockets, basically. so And yeah, she was very nice and and responded. So this podcast has always really also really been a fantastic way for me to expand on connections that I would have never thought possible in the past. like you know When in the past would I have contacted someone like TK, who I really look up to and who is a fantastic content creator and science communicator,
00:31:38
Speaker
and asked her to come on my podcast. And then she does, you know? It's one of these funny things that you never really think about. So the next couple of episodes, episodes 20 and episodes 21, and then actually there was a special bonus episode that went with these were really cool because they were all about tattooing and tattooing tools. So I was joined by Daniel Rydae, who is a professional tattoo artist, and Aaron Dieter-Wolf, who is a professional archaeologist, specialized in ancient tattooing.
00:32:07
Speaker
You've probably heard of them if you have anything to do with ancient tattooing research. So they very kindly came and chatted to me. And again, that's another example of just people that I'd have never imagined that I would actually be able to chat to and kind of pick their brains about and learn so much about because they're so knowledgeable about different topics and they're so specialised. And it's really amazing to have them on board and on the podcast.
00:32:31
Speaker
Same could go for Natasha Bilson, aka Tash Arcio, who was my guest for episode 22, talking about the such a new helmet. And then episode 23 is a funny one. It's one of my closest friends, Jessica Von Dom, who joined me to talk about mummies. And that was just a really fun one to do because we're really good friends, but she is also extremely knowledgeable and knows what she's talking about, which is great. And then we talked about Silver and and of the magic of that specific material with now Dr. Sigrid van Rohe in episode 24. Again, I love the title of this, The Earliest Miniature Influences, and yeah the story behind that was also just a really fun one. And then from episode 25, I started to introduce
00:33:17
Speaker
extra episodes in between my monthly episodes, which was Tea Break Time Travel Training, which I've really enjoyed doing, and it's really great to have the feedback on that that I've had from people. So I did a whole series on different kinds of dating methods, archaeological dating methods, and that's been really, really fun to do, and I want to do something similar in the future as well.
00:33:37
Speaker
but so But then I also, in in between of course, had had some guest episodes still, and they were really interesting because again, they were about topics that I really knew nothing about. So episode 28 was all about the Galloway horde with Dr. Adrian Maldonado, who I actually met because Ash, my co-host of Am My Trowel knows him from somewhere else and asked him to come on Am My Trowel. And then I thought, this is also a really interesting topic for my show. So I managed to ah persuade him to come on my show as well. So thank you, Adrian, again for for coming on that one.
00:34:11
Speaker
episode 30, then looked at ah the Olmec Colossal Heads, which are one of those objects that again, I've always been really interested in, but never really known anything about. So chatted with the amazing Raven Todd De Silva, who again, another person who I met through social media, basically, and then we actually met in person at the EAA, the European Archaeologists Association meeting this year in Rome, and she's as wonderful in person as as you would expect her to be.
00:34:36
Speaker
which was really fun, and we're actually now presenting a paper together at a conference next week. So that's also really interesting. And then I think this is one of my favourite titles as well. My name is Ous, you bet my sword, prepare to die, talking about the sword of Ous, or the chieftain burial of Ous in the Netherlands with my amazing friend and colleague Dr. Sasha van der Fartferschauf, known as the overdressed archaeologist.
00:35:00
Speaker
And then finally, of course, there was last month's episode with da Dr. Alice Blackwell talking about the Lewis chess pieces, which again is one of those objects that I've wanted to talk about for a while. So, I mean, that what this podcast has turned into is more than I could possibly have imagined when I first started it. I can't believe really that I spoke to all of these incredible people and I've found out so much about all of these things.
00:35:29
Speaker
And it's just been so fun and so great um to be able to do. But yes, there is unfortunately a kind of a downside to this and to what I've been doing, which I will talk about after this next break.
Podcast Hiatus and Future Plans
00:35:46
Speaker
Welcome back. Welcome back. So yes, as I said, this podcast has been incredible and I've enjoyed it so much. It's been so Yeah, just really given me a lot of joy. And I really hope that it's given other people joy as well. I've received some really great feedback on it. So thank you so much to everyone who kind of comments on it and shares their feedback with me because honestly, it really means a lot to know that people actually enjoy it. And it's kind of making a difference because I i enjoy it myself, but it's much nicer to know you're actually talking to someone rather than just kind of talking to a guest about nothing really.
00:36:21
Speaker
So the problem is, since finishing my PhD, I've started working in a couple of different jobs. So I have three different jobs at the moment. One of which is working for the Archaeology Podcast Network, which is fantastic. But those jobs together, combined with my personal life, I have two very small children. And it's just all getting a little much. I have a lot of different things that I do. I have a lot of different projects I'm involved in. And I love all of them, which is the problem.
00:36:50
Speaker
because then trying to prioritize is really difficult. But there's certain things that I just need to prioritize right now. And in order to do that, I had to make some tough decisions, and I had to say to myself, okay, let's make a list of all of the different things you do. And let's cut back on those, which will have the least effect on other people, if you would cut them down. So For example, this podcast, it's just me hosting, so I will be continuing with the At My Trial podcast because I have a wonderful co-host who can help take some of the strain off in terms of the organisation and everything, but also I i don't want to you know force her to give up a a podcast by stopping. i mean To be honest, i just I really love that one too much. I don't think I could give it up, whereas yeah this one I thought, you know what, it's
00:37:37
Speaker
I love it. I love making it, but it's just it's got to the stage where it's become more stressful than fun sometimes in recent months to try and organize things to get on top of things. There's been a few months where I've been only just in time with my recording, which never happened to me before. I was always well in time and well on schedule. And so I it just sort of highlighted to me that, OK, maybe I need to take a little bit of a break with it.
00:37:59
Speaker
Maybe I need to take a step back, rethink how I want to do it in the future, rethink maybe the format and how that will change. in order to make my life easier and be able to keep going with it and so that it can still give me joy. So on that note, this will be the last episode of Tea Break Time Travel for a while. Don't worry, not the last episode ever. I'm definitely coming back. In fact, I have already planned a new format and this is what I'm going to share with you now. So we're going to take a break and we're going to come back in September, 2025, which I know is a long way away.
00:38:35
Speaker
In the meantime, please do listen to like at my trial and all of the other shows on the Archaeology Podcast Network. um and do Please keep you know interacting on with me on social media and check out the blog. I'm going to try and keep my blog a bit more up to date as well.
00:38:51
Speaker
But yes, the trying to find guests for every month is just getting a little much at the moment. So I need to take a break and I need to plan properly and prepare properly. So until September, my aim is to record a certain set of episodes that will then be released in a season.
00:39:10
Speaker
And each season will have a different theme. And each season will be composed of 15 episodes in total. So 15 episodes biweekly, I mean, as well. So I'm also still going to continue with my tea break time travel training because I really enjoy them. And it seems that they're very useful as well for people. I've got some nice feedback on that, that they're sort of really helping people to understand these concepts, which was my aim with it. So I'm really happy that that's working out and people are actually enjoying that aspect of it. So I'm going to continue with the tea break time travel training. and I'm going to continue having guests. However, the format will be a little more fun. So recently, the Archaeology Podcast Network celebrated this is its 10-year anniversary. It started back in December 2014. So this year is 10 years of the Archaeology Podcast Network. So whoop, whoop, happy birthday, Archaeology Podcast Network. And at the end of November, we had an event
00:40:03
Speaker
to celebrate and we had a whole day, eight hours of live recordings from a variety of our different shows on the network. And it was really amazing and it was really great fun. And thank you so much to everyone who came along and listened in and participated. It really made it so much nicer to have that interaction and that yeah audience listening in. And as part of that, I of course participated for Tea Break Time Travel and I decided to do Tea Break 20 Questions.
00:40:28
Speaker
If you are an Archaeology Podcast Network member, you can watch the recordings in the member space of your website login. um If you're not a member, consider becoming a member and you'll have access to all this amazing bonus content such as the recordings of our live shows.
00:40:44
Speaker
so I had yes done this Tea Break 20 questions, and what it was, I had two wonderful guests on. I had Raven Todd De Silva and Emma Jones, who had been on my podcast previously, as I just explained when I went through all the episodes. And the thing was, they had to pick an object Nobody else knew what that object was, not even me. And Bring It, inverted commas, because of course this was an online recording, to the recording the show. And then we would basically have a guessing game to see if we could guess what object everyone had brought in. So we had to ask yes or no questions. We were only allowed to ask 20 questions per person. And yeah, it was really great fun. And we managed to guess the objects, which was great. I didn't think we would, but we did. And yeah, and so then we'd guess the objects and then
00:41:32
Speaker
both Emma and Raven gave a little bit of a summary of the object and kind of its history and its context and that sort of thing. And it was just supposed to be a one-off. But I actually thought, you know what, this is really fun. And this is a really interesting way of introducing the objects that we want to talk about. So what's going to happen is,
00:41:50
Speaker
First of all, the episode lengths. So this one is probably going to end up being close to an hour again, which is sort of my usual monthly episodes. And then my tea break time travel trainings are more like half an hour. I'm going to cut down so that all of my episodes are going to be half an hour. So this means that my guest episodes are going to be split in two. So there's going to be a part one and a part two, which would be great fun. So that means that you can listen in and then you'll have more to listen to the month afterwards.
00:42:18
Speaker
So there's going to be three guests per season. those three guests are going to join me at the beginning of the season in a game of Tea Break 20 Questions. So each of them is going to bring a particular object, all related with a particular theme. And we're going to try and guess each other's objects. And we're going to talk a little bit about the theme and kind of the broader context. And then I'm going to have episodes with each of those individual guests, talking in more detail about the objects that they brought in, in a similar vein to how previous episodes of Tea Break time travel have been so far.
00:42:51
Speaker
And then in between, I'm going to have the tea break time travel trainings. And then at the end, maybe we'll have a little sort of summary episode as well. So that's going to be the new format. They're all going to be related with a particular theme. I'm going to be announcing the theme in advance and maybe people can even try and guess the objects in advance as well. Hopefully it might be possible to have some live shows, even if it's just me rather than with a guest, but where people could come and ask questions about the object and once they've listened to the episodes. And yeah, I'm going to see if I can arrange that. But that's why I want to take off time and just launch the next season then in September, because I want to have time to plan properly, to arrange the Tea Break time travel training, to arrange the recordings with the different guests, because yeah, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. And although I am getting paid for my work with the Archaeology Podcast Network,
00:43:44
Speaker
that work does not include creating a podcast. That work includes the live events organisation and the social media coordination. so The podcast production is doing my spare time, um and I don't have much of that at the moment. so I want to make sure that I create something that is interesting for everyone and that everyone can enjoy, but that I can also still enjoy as well. so That's going to be it um then. So this is going to be the last episode for a little while. Feel free to go back and listen to the back catalogue. Feel free to listen to the other shows on the Archaeology Podcast Network. Feel free to still contact me in between. I might also try and share on my social media, for example, in advance of each recording that I do about a particular object. I'll try and share so that I can get people's questions about those objects to then include them in the recordings. I really want to try and do as much interaction as possible.
00:44:36
Speaker
Of course, this is difficult when I'm not doing live recordings, but yeah, hopefully I can try and do that a little bit and get people a bit more involved. So yeah, that marks the end of ah off this tea break. A slightly sad tea break, but also exciting. I'm really looking forward to the new sort of format and to having this sort of seasonal structure. And although it will be very different, I hope that people stay with us and hopefully it still gives you the same joy and it will continue to give me joy as well.
00:45:10
Speaker
And as always, yeah, I'm always happy to receive feedback. I'm always happy to receive comments. I i love hearing from people about the podcast. Like I say, it really gives me a flush of pride and joy that people are actually interested in this and listening to it.
00:45:23
Speaker
So thank you so much for listening today. I hope that you enjoyed this little brief journey but into the past 35 episodes, looking at the past and also a little bit of an insight into the future and what it holds. And as I say, even though we're going to be I'm going to be going on hiatus for a while, please do continue to support the network as much as you can. You don't have to become a member necessarily, although like I said, lots of lovely perks such as bonus material recordings and much, much more.
00:45:52
Speaker
But you can also, even just, you know, liking, subscribing, following us on social media. ah You can join our Discord server where we have monthly chats on different discussions related to one of the latest podcast releases. We have all our live events over on the Discord server, which in 2025, we're going to be starting monthly live events as well. So yeah, do come and join us over there. Every little helps.
00:46:15
Speaker
sharing things, supporting us in that way is also fantastic. And then that means when I come back in September, when tea break time travel comes back, there'll be a wonderful community waiting to embrace it, hopefully full with cups of tea. In the meantime, enjoy the Festive period. Enjoy the months um until September. I really, really look forward to seeing you then and yeah keep that kettle boiled for me. I hope that you enjoyed our journey today. If you did, make sure to like, follow, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and I'll see you next month for another episode of Tea Break Time Travel.
00:46:53
Speaker
The Archaeology Podcast Network is 10 years old this year. Our executive producer is Ashley Airy. Our social media coordinator is Matilda Sebrecht. And our chief editor is Rachel Rodin. The Archaeology Podcast Network was co-founded by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in 2014 and is part of CulturoMedia and DigTech LLC. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.