Transcript
Speaker: You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. This is a content warning for this episode. There are mentions of harassment and sexual assault. Although no details are given, this is part of a wider discussion. Just thought I'd give you a heads up.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Modern Myth, the archaeology podcast that tries to look at history and heritage in the past in a different way.
Speaker: yes it's been a few months since you've heard this wonderful dulcet voice but that's because you know I've been busy and you know everybody's busy at this time at the moment so I'm trying to get back in the swing of things and but I still want to like upend things and do things a little bit differently so the person I'm talking to today is I put a call out to a group on Facebook and this was one of the people who responded and I'd be really interested kind of
Speaker: talk through the kind of issues that archaeologists face day by day and the kind of groups and organizations that are out there to help them. So I want to welcome Rosie Loftus here to Modern Myth. Hello. Hello. So you're an assistant supervisor with CFA Archaeology and you're based down in Leeds? Yes, that's right.
Speaker: So I do have to ask, have you found any golden treasure yet? Ha ha ha. No, that's a joke. So I'm quite interested actually, what's going on down in Leeds at the moment? Well, apart from obviously things not happening at the moment.
Speaker: So currently we're working on site on quite a large infrastructure project in the south of England. So it means we're doing a lot of the way work. We're doing our best to keep social distancing going on site. So we're all working separately. We're sitting in separate cabins, separate cars.
Speaker: I'm sitting by myself in quite a nice flat at the moment. So yeah, that's kind of just how we're dealing with it, washing our hands every 10 minutes. We've got one of our site assistants cleaning the cabins and just watching diggers.
Speaker: Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, there are quite a lot of bits within archaeology, commercial archaeology, that you actually are social distancing quite a lot anyway. I know that I've seen guides on, like, having to deal with, you know, living away from home and everything like that. Do you think archaeologists have a unique set of tools with that respect? Is there a little bit of social distancing already going on in archaeology, maybe?
Speaker: I'd say there's definitely a little bit of distancing from friends and family sometimes but it's a little bit odd actually staying by yourself in accommodation because you're usually staying with your colleagues so that that feels very strange but at the same time you know if you're down a ditch you're usually down down the ditch by yourself
Speaker: you know, sort of three, four hours sometimes. You know, if it's just you on a watching beef, then it can be yourself sitting in the car. So I'd say, I think we're quite good at keeping ourselves entertained by ourselves. But at the same time, it's very strange not being able to just kind of walk up to your colleagues and have a chat or make them a, you know, sort of
Speaker: make a cup of tea or have a cup of tea made for you. And it's even little things we're thinking about like sharing bottles of sun cream, because it's quite warm and sunny at the moment. But we're just not used to doing that. And I think we used to live in communally, but kind of away from other community, the non archaeological community.
Speaker: Oh, yes, them. Them that do not understand. They will never understand. Archaeology does have a habit, however, of despite many people coming from different parts of, like, different subject areas, different parts of the world, archaeology does seem to always bring in very odd characters. And I must say, I've met quite a few interesting people on site.
Speaker: How did you come into archaeology? What was the kind of, what was the pathway there? Okay, it was slightly convoluted actually. So I went on an excavation to a site called Woodhall on a school trip when I was about seven maybe, and we had a talk in assembly from one of the archaeologists on site before
Speaker: Yeah, I went to the site and I just fell in love with archaeology. That was it for me. That was what I was going to do. And I was lucky enough to be able to then do an A level in archaeology taught by an actual archaeology graduate who had some site experience. I think that man's probably produced more archaeologists than some university courses do.
Speaker: So archaeology in Yorkshire is a fairly small world. And every now and then someone will say, you're one of Steve's, aren't you? Steve taught you. And you're like, yeah, he did. Then I did my degree in ancient history and archaeology at Newcastle. And I graduated in 2010, which was right in the heart of the recession. There were absolutely no archaeology jobs at all.
Speaker: So I kind of bided my time for a bit. So I worked in retail. I was on the fitting room at TK Maxx for nearly four years. And I also worked as a school librarian and as a care worker for adults with learning difficulties. And I think that actually really set me up for dealing with some of the odd characters within archaeology.
Speaker: And then I was off with my first job in 2015. I was on the circuit for about three years and I've been with my current company for nearly two years now. So it's just, it was a bit convoluted and I just hung in there, I hung in there and it took me five years after graduating to get my first archaeology job. And I was so determined I was going to do it and, you know, I managed.
Speaker: Yeah, I think funny enough though, from the people I've spoken to in archaeology, a convoluted path is quite common. Yes, so one of my fairly good friends was a painter and decorator and he decided later on in life he wanted to be an archaeologist and he went to uni and got a degree and sort of went in that way.
Speaker: I think archaeology is almost vocational in the sense that nobody goes into archaeology for the money, let's all be honest. And to get into archaeology there are a lot of barriers really that people don't really think about.
Speaker: I do find it kind of concerning and I think it's getting better now that there are beginnings of plans to make archaeology as a discipline more approachable from different pathways.
Speaker: I know that like, I mean, I started off doing chemistry and then for a university and then I became an archaeology with chemistry, minor major, and I then did a couple of jobs in archaeology and then
Speaker: I couldn't I couldn't do the kind of going from one place to another to another to another I just didn't have the infrastructure for that so I just decided I had to do a day job and archaeology would be on the side so for me
Speaker: you know, like hearing that story of you doing all this other stuff and then getting into archaeology, like getting your final archaeology job later along the line. It's very real and I think it's something that a lot of people have to deal with, especially nowadays.
Speaker: Yes, it is. However, because we've got some big infrastructure projects coming up, it is easier these days to get a job in archaeology than it was. But you know, you meet people who used to be in the army, you meet people who works behind the bar.
Speaker: of the local pub for years. In fact, I know someone who was a pub landlady for a little while during the recession.
Speaker: So I think it is getting easier and I think part of it is because there's more information online about how to do it. So sites like Badger and advertising, jobs, that wasn't necessarily a resource that I knew about when I graduated university.
Speaker: And I mean, the same thing happened to me when I was at university, I must say that like,
Speaker: I didn't really interact with a lot of things outside of university archaeology. And then my final year I discovered archaeological Twitter. And yeah, well, you know, I love being on archaeological Twitter. It's great. But it was it was actually a competition, a student competition that I wrote into that was being run by the Scottish group for SIFA that actually got me into the wider world of archaeology.
Speaker: so it's weird, there's no set way of doing it and I think that's quite good in some respects but bad in others you know. I'd actually agree with you, it's good because we do get this amazing
Speaker: diverse range of individuals working in archaeology and they all think different skills to the table and different life experiences and also there can be incredibly interesting people to work with
Speaker: However, it does mean because there's no set way into archaeology, it makes me wonder about the skill we actually lose because people don't know how to get an archaeology job. And I think that certainly when I was a student, careers advice was incredibly poor.
Speaker: at university for archaeology and they actually wanted to talk about transferable skills rather than actually using your degree to do a job that you need your degree for. And I think as well that a lot of universities aren't necessarily pushing field schools as much as they should do.
Speaker: and there's also a bit of a wealth gap as well for students with regards to access to field schools because you find that the wealthy students or say the students who have had support from their families can afford to pay to go on field schools and go for longer and less wealthy students
Speaker: can't because usually field schools are self -funded and I think that's a huge issue because you get in students who don't have that experience to maybe write about on the CV or to sort of gain those contacts as well with people who will help you get your first archaeology job and with archaeology it's not necessarily what you know it's who you know
Speaker: and it's kind of as soon as you get your first job in archaeology you're more likely to get your second and your third and so on and so forth but it's actually getting in. I think it's still an issue for some people. Oh definitely, definitely. I still count myself lucky my first employer took a chance on me so I must say that shouldn't be how it's done but
Speaker: without dwelling too much on it. There are things that are happening to make the industry better and I'm quite interested in this segue too, talking about moi. How would you pronounce it? So we started calling it moi and it's a pure coincidence that they're the initials for the group
Speaker: moire is mentoring women archaeology and heritage and it's a facebook group with as of sunday um when i actually checked um it has 934 members
Speaker: So it's a group for women who work in the heritage industry or have connections to the heritage industry to have discussions about certain topics, ask for advice, and network as well. And networking is incredibly important in archaeology.
Speaker: So it basically, the group basically started in an Ethiopian restaurant in Wakefield, which for anyone who doesn't know is a city. City, I've got, I've got to stress that we do have a cathedral. All right, so you're that little bit of
Speaker: OK, yeah. So it's Wakefield's a city in West Yorkshire and before admins, before we were the admins, went out for a meal and we all work in archaeology, but it's two very different parts of archaeology. So we've got
Speaker: Two people who are, well in fact at the time there were three people who were consultants and myself the lonely digger. And we just started chatting about, as these things go, about the issues facing women in archaeology and why women are finding it hard to get promoted within archaeology.
Speaker: And we think that the major issue is that because there aren't as many female managers as there maybe should be in archaeology, women aren't seeing the female managers. So they're not necessarily aspiring to become managers. And because we don't have these role models, we're not necessarily trying to emulate them so much.
Speaker: And we're thinking one of the major issues is that actually we need mentors and we need to have contact with people maybe further along the career ladder that we can ask advice for at ROM. And I mean, I know personally when I first started in field work, because maybe I started a little bit later than some of my colleagues did.
Speaker: later in life that I actually felt quite lonely and a little bit useless. So I went from doing a job that I was quite good at and quite experienced that in retail
Speaker: to starting completely flesh with a completely fresh group of people. I didn't know how to talk to other archaeologists. And I felt lonely and I felt like I was being really stupid a lot of the time. And I determined that other people shouldn't feel like that. Because everyone feels like that when they first start.
Speaker: And I think some people pretend that they don't. And I think there isn't necessarily that honest conversation that, of course, you're not going to be very good at doing this, you're new. So for me, moi is about kind of encouraging women who are new into archaeology, into staying and not feeling bad about themselves because they can't do something yet.
Speaker: or they don't do such a good job on something because you learn. And as you were saying earlier, because archaeology is incredibly vocational, you don't actually learn how to do fieldwork at university. You learn about the academic side of it. So your first day and your first week and your first few months on site can be a bit of a shock to the system. Yeah.
Speaker: I, it's quite interesting. I think it'd be quite interesting to know about, so when that group started, what was the kind of reaction to that? You know, did you have people say, well, why are you doing this? Like, what was people's reaction when this started? Were you one of the first people to help set it up? Yep. So I'm one of the first people to set it up. So the one of those who went for the
Speaker: this meal out in Wakefield, us four, set it up. And then we started inviting other female archaeologists. We also with the permission of the Badger admins. So should we explain what Badger is talking about?
Speaker: And you know what like British archaeology journal resource whatever I don't know David sorry I'm sorry I keep getting it wrong I just call it badger everybody knows it as badger but yes if you want if you've got a better description of what badger is because for me it's just like the archaeology place where they have the jobs
Speaker: Yeah, that's quite a good way of describing it. So Badger is British archaeology, jobs and resources. And it's a website and it's also a Facebook group as well. And on the Facebook group, we share information
Speaker: with each other. So we've been so prospects been talking a lot about coronavirus on Badger. And companies are advertised for staff on Badger. It's quite a good place to just keep an eye on, because you never know quite what's going on.
Speaker: So we with David Connolly's permission advertised our group on Badger and it basically snowballed and we were there thinking like okay there's maybe gonna be 15 women on here and we're just gonna kind of
Speaker: say, it's really hard being a woman in archaeology, and they'll say, yeah, it's really hard being a woman in archaeology. And then we'd all get a bit bored and go away. But it's absolutely snowballed. And I think myself and the four other admins who set it up, well, three other admins who set it up, were slightly overwhelmed by it. Because nowhere did we actually think that the response to it would be this positive
Speaker: and the original idea was to try and match people up maybe with a mentor but actually the groups become the mentor because that makes sense if you've got a query that you can ask someone you know or you can say I'm having a really bad day. I had a really nasty meeting with a consultant and a county archaeologist and I feel like piggy in the middle
Speaker: please can have some advice about maybe how to keep calm, how to put my point across. And there'll be like 20 odd answers of people giving advice. So I'd say, yeah, just being positive, really, really positive. We've had no unpleasant incidents in the two years the group's been loving. We've not had to ban anyone.
Speaker: I'd say the only thing that we've had, response we've had that's negative is maybe some men in archaeology saying, why don't you let men in? And my response is, if you want to set up a mentoring group, please do. I'll support you. So I'd say that that's the only kickback we've had here. But it's not really kickback from within the group.
Speaker: And obviously, I mean, do you think it's, do you think the kind of the questions that are being asked now with all the data now that you've hundreds of people in this group, are the questions changing or are the questions actually very much the similar veins? I mean, are you noticing anything patterns wise?
Speaker: I think the questions are staying fairly similar because the questions that are being asked on it and the topics that kind of come up on it are really quite diverse. So we've had everything from I'm having to wear the hard hat for work and I've got lots and lots of hair and it's getting in my eyes. What does everyone else do with the hard hat and the hair? I'm going into a meeting with a developer
Speaker: who keeps on talking over me and is bullying me. How do I deal with this? I'd say the only thing that I think has changed recently is people are maybe asking for sort of pointers towards maybe academic references.
Speaker: That's the biggest change, so someone's saying, I'm looking for this book, here's the author, does anyone know how to get hold of a copy? I'd say that's the biggest change maybe in the past few weeks.
Speaker: And I think that's maybe students finishing up the dissertation and stuff like that and saying, I really need help finding this source because I know it exists somewhere. Please help.
Speaker: Yeah definitely. Now it's interesting you've talked a lot I think about what we would call imposter syndrome, talking about like not feeling like able to speak up, feeling pretty stupid, feeling like you should know how to do these things and that happens to a lot of people, it happens to a lot of people especially at the start of everything.
Speaker: But actually there are some other topics that do get talked about that are important and I think we need to talk about them as well. Obviously there was for any of our listeners who don't know the Badger and let me get the history, correct me on the historical timeline of this,
Speaker: the respect campaign and the respect badges. Could you tell us a little bit about that? So a few years ago it kind of came out that there was actually quite a lot of bullying happening on site. So Badger launched the respect campaign
Speaker: And there is actually a Facebook group called Respect Women. I think it's Respect Women, something like that. And it's run by Kat Lease, one of our members. And the idea was that if you signed up to the kind of no bullying pledge and bought a badge and wore the badge on site, then you're kind of signing up to not bullying staff.
Speaker: So that sounded really weak. So anyway, yeah, we work alongside the Respect campaign, but we're not actually part of it. Okay, yes, of course. But obviously, harassment is something that I'm sure comes up quite a lot in discussions.
Speaker: What sort of form does that talk about? I mean, how are people discussing it? What is the discussions normally about?
Speaker: So that's quite interesting. We don't have an enormous amount of discussions about harassment, or not as many as you would actually think. So one of our members, Danny, for her dissertation, did a survey of field workers in 2019 asking them if they'd experienced sexual misconduct at work.
Speaker: 300 people responded. Out of those who answered the survey, 14 .8 % of men said that they'd been harassed at work and 33 .6 % of women.
Speaker: So, Dani's dissertation was actually put up for an award with the CBA. And when she went up on stage to collect this award, she was actually laughed at.
Speaker: by a group of older men in the audience and obviously she left the stage quite distressed and quite tearful and she initially kind of told us on our group what had happened and she'd also tweeted about it and fortunately and unfortunately at the same time the media got hold of it
Speaker: and she was like basically harassed by journalists for like the best part of a week after this happened and she was contacted by Good Morning and all sorts of yeah so tv shows and stuff like that asking her to come on and talk about her experience
Speaker: And I think the fact that she had this experience shows with the men laughing at her, and they're still not quite tracked down who it was, the CBA. Because of the men laughing, I think it actually proves how vital this research is.
Speaker: because it's actually highlighting the harassment is an issue and harassment isn't necessarily being taken as seriously as it should be by some sectors of the heritage industry.
Speaker: So what we did is actually we wanted to focus not necessarily on the harassment, but the fact that she'd actually won an award. So we massively faced on the group about winning this award for a dissertation because it is incredible. You know, I've never come across anyone who's actually got an award for their undergraduate dissertation before. It's definitely worth celebrating, definitely.
Speaker: Absolutely. So actually we're trying to boost people's confidence after issues of harassment happened. And the only thing about this study that actually shocked me was the fact that the number of women who were harassed, the percentage was so low, because I've definitely been harassed on site by other archaeologists.
Speaker: And anecdotally, I know actually a lot of women have been harassed on site, but maybe they're not necessarily seen it as harassment. Yeah, I think that's one of the things is that harassment is...
Speaker: I don't want to phrase this wrongly but there's a subjective aspect to how people maintain boundaries and how people interact with each other. I know that there are some people who speak vulgarly to each other.
Speaker: And, you know, perhaps there are certain situations in which when you have an understanding between yourself and somebody else and you know them a long time and you know how they are, then, you know, there are things that you can say to them that you can't say to somebody you don't know.
Speaker: And I think the key thing is about having that respect in place for people you don't know so well. And not to say that you should be harassing people you do know well, but I think a lot of the problems come from people just not understanding what the what the boundaries should be. And and there's the other side of it is that there doesn't seem to be like
Speaker: I feel like there doesn't seem to be a level of consequence to things when they get raised and that's a big problem as well.
Speaker: Yeah, I'd absolutely agree with you. So my current company, there was an incident and actually it was dealt with very quickly and very professionally. However, definitely with previous employers, there has been a bit of a culture of non -reporting.
Speaker: I'd say I think that's a big issue. And when people do report, it's not necessarily being taken as seriously as it should be. So maybe dismissing the member of staff who's raised this issue and raised this concern, because maybe the very young, maybe it's not being witnessed.
Speaker: That can be a bit of an issue as well. Not necessarily believing it as serious as it is. So I had a female colleague from a former employer years ago who was very badly harassed.
Speaker: by a male colleague. And it was being taken very seriously on site by managers on site, but not necessarily being taken seriously by more senior management. So the staff on site were doing the best to keep them separated, making sure they were in separate accommodation, separate parts of site and stuff like that.
Speaker: But it came to a point where she'd moved sites and he was going to be moved on to that site she was on and she was in floods of tears about it because she was so scared that the harassment would continue on this new site.
Speaker: And again, the people who were running the site managed to keep them as separate as humanly possible. But it was the upper management not taking it as seriously as it should have been. And across all my professional experience, I have to say is the single worst case of bullying and harassment I have ever seen. And I hope to goodness that I never see anything like it repeated.
Speaker: I mean it was just, it was a sustained campaign of bullying and it just wasn't taken seriously and we think that maybe the reason that it wasn't taken seriously by management was there was a lack of female management at that company, at that point. And so there wasn't this kind of, almost like this understanding of that this is a serious thing and it's not something you can simply brush off
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's right. So I think maybe that's going to start changing, partly with the respect campaign and this research that's being done. But also because we're joining the trade union now.
Speaker: more and more archaeologists to join in, prospect. So actually that will give us an independent recourse and an independent means of actually trying to sort this out. And actually it will bring in maybe a third party who'd be able to put pressure on the managers who don't take it as seriously as it should be taken to actually do something about it.
Speaker: I think another issue is it can be really difficult to prove harassment. Yeah. Because it can be a bit, he said, she said, they said. And it's really difficult to prove bullying in the workplace because it can be so subtle.
Speaker: It can be like little things where the kind of people are trying to undermine your confidence. It can be as apparent as pushing someone over. But unless you've got that physical evidence that something's happened, you know, it can be very tough for managers to maybe get rid of the bully. But also it can be, you know, and the burden of food is very definitely on the victim.
Speaker: as well. But I think it is changing and I think it is improving and I think it will improve as well. And I think because of the respect campaign it actually brought an awareness to people that this was happening and this is real.
Speaker: and I think it maybe broke a bit of a fantasy we have about archaeology where we think you know we're all this kind of group of bumbling odds and sods that kind of bumble on and get on with each other and say actually no there is sometimes bit of an undercurrent.
Speaker: No, of course. No, I think that's really and it's something that I think for optics reasons and for kind of keeping the veneer of this kind of like what you were saying, this kind of idea that, oh, no, everybody in archeology gets along one big happy family. I think there's a lot of people who don't want to stir, you know, it's not stirring things up. It's actually bringing things to light. But a lot of people are very worried about that.
Speaker: but I think there is something positive about talking and interacting and doing stuff. I mean, so the mentoring one in archaeology and heritage, or moi, as I really like, that's so good, I love moi.
Speaker: what I know that you have, you've said to me in the original email you send that you guys are doing weekly events. Could you tell me a little bit more about like the kind of events that you do on the page? And what's kind of like what's the future facing kind of vision of moi, you know, in the short term?
Speaker: So we do weekly events, so today is Wednesday, so we do something called We Lock Wednesday, which I actually stole from another Facebook group, so thank you for that, the people on that group, I must say.
Speaker: So We Lock Wednesday is where we encourage, it's a thread where we encourage members to post about maybe the little achievements of the day.
Speaker: So, um, my Wednesday today, cause obviously I can't quite, I can't tell our members that I'm recording a podcast till I've actually recorded the podcast. Um, my achievement of today was the sun shining and I managed to eat a really nice peach for, yeah, for my dinner. Um, for other people, it can be, I finished my PhD thesis.
Speaker: For some people it can be, I've got out of bed today and since we're on lockdown it can be, I've got out of bed today, I've put on my smart pyjamas and I've had a Zoom meeting with my colleagues and it went really well.
Speaker: So it's just like little little achievements and it's kind of self -esteem boosting because you're seeing yourself doing something well and productive and you're actually seeing other people around you doing something well and productive. We also do self -care Sunday which was started by one of our members completely independently
Speaker: And it's kind of things we're doing to look after ourselves a little bit, what you're doing in that moment to relax. So for me, before lockdown, it was always I'm watching pointless with my granddad.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, that was, so it's like little things like that that again, we're doing to look after ourselves. Um, I also, um, when I remember, um, do a segment on a Friday called old woman of the week.
Speaker: where I type out a biography of an interesting or inspirational woman. So last week's was Frida Kahlo and a few weeks before that I did Nellie Blythe who went around the world in 72 days in the late Victorian period and then wrote a book about it
Speaker: And she's a very interesting character and lived quite a life. One of the other admins, Amy, since the lockdown started, has been doing Fun Day Friday's, where she's been finding similar little activities to do.
Speaker: So this week one of our other members had drawn these gnomes for people to colour in and Amy emailed people these photos of gnomes and very occasionally now we're getting them photos of gnomes popping up on our newsfeed that have been coloured in and that's been quite entertaining. We also tried a Google Hangout
Speaker: on the second Friday of lockdown I want to say and that was quite nice as well because it was running for hours and hours and hours and hours and people were just kind of popping in and out and it was really quite nice to put a face and a voice to the names and the Facebook profiles of people you've actually been interacting with for you know a couple of years in some cases but you've never met them
Speaker: So at one point we had someone up in the Shetland Isles alongside someone from the Isle of Wighton. So you know I'm not quite sure how far that is kind of distance wise but you're talking at least a thousand miles just kind of chatting about inconsequential things and just keeping each other company a little bit and knowing that actually you're not alone during this lockdown and
Speaker: everyone's kids are running about screaming and everyone's dogs deciding to howl in the middle of remote meetings and that was all very nice and positive as well. So I'd say our goal in the short term is just to keep the group running because it seems to be doing something right
Speaker: And as admins, we don't know quite what that is. And we think it's actually down to our members just being nice. And that sounds really, really...
Speaker: I don't know, kind of superficial, but it's just been nice. And also boosting, in the long term, we quite like to start boosting people's confidence as to maybe ask for that promotion and actually start to change from the bottom up the issues within archaeology that we're seeing that are facing women.
Speaker: If people are interested in finding out more about the Mentoring Women in Archaeology and Heritage group, it's the Facebook page. Is there anything else online that's happening with that? Yes. I think this is actually one of the most important things that has come out of this group.
Speaker: is the Seeing Red campaign, which campaigns for menstrual equality, shall we say, within archaeology. So it was launched at Tag 2019, and it's run by one of our admins, Amy,
Speaker: So the idea is it's to normalize the idea of periods on site. So I don't know a single female archaeologist. So let's say archaeologist who menstruates, who hasn't got a period on a story. So for me, it was I was on a site with no access to toilets.
Speaker: and my moon cup was leaking and I had to go over the road and ask other archaeologists if I could use their toilet so I could sort myself out and kind of maintain a bit of dignity because I was the only woman on our side and I was thinking this could become a bit of an issue within the next
Speaker: hour or so. I mean you find that there are again this is changing now but many women in construction don't necessarily have free access to toilets and a lot of the times these toilets will actually have
Speaker: soap and sanitary bins in them, which makes it actually quite hard to maintain a mental health. Also, it can mean that you're making a choice between, say, changing a pad or a tampon in potentially unsanitary conditions. You hear about women having to, like, crouch behind bushes.
Speaker: to change the tampon and you kind of choose in between changing them in unsanitary conditions or bleeding through your clothes and that can lead to other issues such as urinary tract infections and it can actually lead to lost days of work because you're having to go home, because you can't cope.
Speaker: because you're on your period and that's not right. So what Amy's done is she's written a Badger Guide called Seeing Med, which is available to anyone on their website and is available to all employers as well. And she recommends that sites have what's called a period first aid kit,
Speaker: And that contains a selection of pads, tampons, hand sanitizers, like little bags. So stuff to actually make our lives a little bit better on site and to level out the playing field a little bit. Because we're not asking for special treatment. We're asking to kind of level out the playing field so actually we can do our job.
Speaker: So you might be saying, well, why don't you go to a shop and just buy some pads if there aren't any, you know, you don't have one in your bag. And it's because we can be working in the back end of nowhere.
Speaker: We can be working five miles from the nearest shop, ten miles from the nearest shop, and we might not necessarily have access to a site vehicle. And if we have like short, vacant dinner times, we might not actually have time to go to the shop to
Speaker: get the product to sort ourselves out. So it's actually been taken up by fame and prospect and obviously Badger as well. So fame is the Federation of Archaeological Managers and lots of archaeological employers have also taken this idea up.
Speaker: as well, including my own company. It was actually quite nice to see in the back of one of the vehicles one day, just this little bag full of sanitary products. And I was like, yes, go Amy, go Amy. And obviously go CFA as well. And actually, it was really exciting because I got to use it.
Speaker: I shouldn't have been excited, but I was. But it's good that that support and that, I mean, this is the thing is that it just goes to show you that a small grassroots group can affect change. In a relatively short time scale, that actually has a legitimate and tangible effect. I think that's a very, very good positive note to take from it all.
Speaker: because that is something that people sometimes say is like, well, you know, what's actually, what's the point in getting together and talking about these things? Nothing gets done. But actually, that's a great example of when getting together has actually got things done. And I think that is really, really important.
Speaker: I think the value of collaborating and talking and getting together is definitely undervalued and I think it's definitely the way the way forward in archaeology and I think it's just it's it's really really good it's a really good example what can be done. Definitely yes and I think as well it's just people being determined to change it so people have actually been talking about these issues for
Speaker: years on site, but they've not necessarily had the platform to kind of talk about it publicly. And one of the ways we're going to affect change within archaeology is talking about it and talking about it publicly and loudly.
Speaker: Definitely, definitely. That's really good. Well, thank you again for coming on to the show and talking about all these different things. They're really, really important. Is there anything, any advice you would give to somebody who's just starting off in archaeology in the commercial world? What would your bit of advice be to anybody? I'd say keep going. Absolutely.
Speaker: keep going and join the trade union. That would be the biggest bit of advice could give them. Ask for help. If you're struggling on site, say, I really need help and everyone will feel as useless as you do in the beginning. It just feels like everyone seems really confident
Speaker: and everyone seems really confident on the surface. But I guarantee that everyone on site from the person on their first day to a project manager with 15 years experience will feel out of the depth at some point in their career. And it's how you cope with feeling out of your depth. And the best way to cope with that is to ask for help
Speaker: And the best way that people may be who are looking after people on their first few weeks within archaeology can help these people is actually say, yes, I felt like this too. Yes, I struggled with this too. This is how I coped with it. And also tell stories about your successes on site, but also talk about things that didn't go so right as well too.
Speaker: So my favorite story to tell new stuff is the first feature I dug by myself was a gully and it was over cut by 50 centimeters. Okay. Yeah. And it's because I didn't ask for help. Cause I didn't, cause I didn't know what a gully was because I thought I was too scared to ask for help.
Speaker: And I was too scared to admit I didn't know what I was doing. Yeah, no, but I'm sure a lot of people feel like that and that's why talking about this settles it for people because people know that, you know, it's okay not to know. It's okay to ask.
Speaker: That's really great.
Speaker: You're opening the horizon, say to me. It's a modern myth, oh yeah. This age of darkness, we will fight for truth at night. If this age of lies, we will rise. Now it's clear, misconception too healthy. They told you what you want to hear.
Speaker: Can't you see that the truth will set you free? Expose this modern myth with me! A myth! Modern myth! Modern myth! Modern myth! It's a modern myth, oh yeah!
Speaker: 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.
