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The Modern Myth : A conversation with Amy Nuttall
742 Plays4 years ago
In this episode of Modern Myth I sit down with MA student Amy Nuttall to talk about ADHD and the common myths, and how it has shaped her university experience.
She talks about her ungraduate studies, including spending time in a tent on the Welsh coast, in order to dig up ancient sites there. We discuss the ways in which archaeology could possibly be better for people with ADHD and talk about Amy's upcoming MA work that is about bellows and metallurgy.
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Transcript
Introduction and Need for Diverse Voices
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Modern Myth, the archaeology podcast that dares to be different. It's Tristan here, the anarchiologist. And today's episode is a very interesting and special episode. I have a really, really great guest to talk to me about their experiences.
00:00:43
Speaker
And I want to kind of preface this all with, I feel sometimes in archaeology, especially in archaeological media, there are certain people who don't get to speak out. And I think, especially within the mainstream traditional media platforms, a lot of people, the same people get talked to again and again.
00:01:03
Speaker
So my kind of endeavor over the next couple of months is to really broaden the spectrum of people who I talk to and engage with and discuss things from their own perspectives.
Engaging Stories from Underrepresented Archaeologists
00:01:15
Speaker
So a couple of weeks ago I put a post on a Facebook group called the Enabled Archaeology Foundation group.
00:01:25
Speaker
And I was looking for people who had experiences in archaeology that were maybe not talked about very much. And I was particularly interested in hearing from people who felt like the way they experienced things wasn't really on a podcast. It wasn't on TV show. It wasn't really discussed. And a number of people did come back to me. And I've had really, really good conversations with them back and forth, back and forth with email.
Meet Amy Nuttall - Archaeology Student
00:01:53
Speaker
And one of the people is Amy Nuttall, who is here with me today. Hello. So Amy, I'll let you kind of introduce yourself. So you're a student at the University of Sheffield. Yep, that's right. So what particular bit of archaeology are you specifically interested in? If you look at archaeology, what's the really interesting bit for you?
00:02:23
Speaker
Well, my degree program is cultural materials. So we focus on the actual artifacts and the materials. On my course, we focus on ceramics and metallurgy, but particularly I'm interested in metallurgy. Okay. So like making bronze and stuff like that. Yeah. So we've done a couple of fairness melts and made some iron actually the first time, which is really interesting and testing out different ways of doing that.
00:02:52
Speaker
So why did you even, sorry, I'll rephrase that. Why does anybody do archaeology? So what made you choose to do study archaeology in the first place? In the first place. I always, always, always wanted to be an archaeologist. My mum and dad took me to a lot of stone circles and stuff like that as a kid. I was the kid at the illegal raves with the hippy parents at three years old.
00:03:15
Speaker
in stone circles and stuff and places that we shouldn't have really been but we've always had time team on the telly when I was growing up and stuff like that and I always wanted to be an archaeologist so I managed to cling on to that dream and do my undergrad in it and I've just continued. So wow I mean that that's really a good start because a lot of people I hear there's certainly a generation of archaeologists who say that Indiana Jones was
Cultural Significance of Stone Circles
00:03:39
Speaker
their main
00:03:40
Speaker
kind of like foray into archaeology. I'm really glad that you've presented us a different option. Because I feel like archaeology shouldn't just be interested in like, what's happening on the TV, or what films are about archaeologists. I really like the family story where, you know, you were just around a lot of stone circles and well, that's it.
00:04:06
Speaker
Do you have a favourite stone circle? Don't say Stonehenge, please. No, not my favourite. Probably Nine Ladies. We've been to a couple of parties and stuff there when I was growing up. It's very special. For the geographically challenged of us, like myself, where is Nine Ladies? Oh god, hang on.
00:04:25
Speaker
I don't know. You give up. It sounds more in Derbyshire. Oh lovely, lovely. I don't know where Derbyshire is, but I will look it up on a map as well. So what in particular do you like about that stone circle? What's special about it?
00:04:46
Speaker
I don't know, I think you don't hear about it, it's one of the unsung ones maybe. What's the underdog? It's the underdog of stone circles. Yeah, I've just had a lot of stories when I was growing up about parties that we've been to there so it's the one that I've heard about and we've revisited it and revisited it and it's very lovely.
00:05:05
Speaker
I like making the joke, you know how it's always like, oh, this is such and such as Stonehenge. And it's almost like Stonehenge is the archetypal like stone circle. I love flipping it and being like, well, it's almost like England's Ness of Brogar, you know, like flip it around a bit. I think it's the worst one maybe.
00:05:29
Speaker
There's just so many better stones there. There's one with the recumbent stones in Scotland. There's a thing, I don't know if you've seen this, where they're on a standstill moon, which happens once every blue moon. You can see the full moon will fall out of the side of one stone across the recumbent fallen over stone and disappear behind the next one. I think that there's so many amazing things like that happening at stone circles. And it kind of happens at Stonehenge, but not really. I don't know why it's the main. It's just because it's big.
00:05:59
Speaker
I do find that really interesting though, that there seems to be an inherent or intrinsic value that people place upon
00:06:10
Speaker
monuments in terms of heritage like it doesn't take very much to kind of show somebody who's not really interested in history or has isn't knowledgeable about history you can show them a monument and they understand that like that was that's ancient it's got that like ancient feel to it it's such a good way of sharing the public archaeology because you're undeniably standing in the middle of something that's neolithic you can't escape it
00:06:39
Speaker
If I hand you a pot, you'll be like, oh, it's a pot. But if I put you in the middle of a stone circle, absolutely flooded, and you're in that environment, and you can't escape that, and you have to acknowledge the history. I think, yeah, I think we need to have more people in stone circles. It sounds a little cultish, to be fair. Let's round them up. Encouraging them to climb on the stones.
00:07:02
Speaker
Yeah, that is a problem, isn't it? You know what we should do? Have you ever seen people who put grease on the bird feeder poles in their gardens and they watch the squirrels try and climb up it? I think we should just grease the stone circles and just watch as people try and clamber over them and slip off.
00:07:24
Speaker
I don't think they're going to listen to me, I don't know, something about some of my ideas about public archaeology, I don't think they'd listen. But I think, I mean, you've now, like, how was your, like, what was your final dissertation in your undergrad?
ADHD, Academia, and Support Systems
00:07:46
Speaker
What was that subject of that? What did you do?
00:07:50
Speaker
I studied, so there was an assemblage in the local museum of like 200 odd Patagonian arrowheads from like loads of different materials, loads of different areas and stuff but nobody knew how they arrived in a museum in Bangor, North Wales.
00:08:06
Speaker
And so I was doing like a little bit of detective work and trying to work backwards from that. And I linked it to Pit Rivers. I don't know if you know Pit Rivers, like one of those big influential otheologist guys. Yeah. And so I linked it back to him and he married a girl and wound up staying in Penran Castle, which is in Bangor as well. And I'm pretty sure that he brought those over or a friend brought them over and gave them to him. And then they wound up in this museum. But so it was on like a weird hunt after these Patagonian arreads across the planet. So
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think I think it was okay. That's really cool. And it's weird you saying banger because like I grew up in the other banger. I grew up in the Northern Irish banger. Some was like, I always feel like a rivalry between me and the other banger. I mean, I said, Oh, yeah, I come from banger. And I swear somebody said to me, Oh, in Wales, I'm like, do I sound Welsh to you? You know, you just put on the you put on more than an Irish accent when somebody accuses you of being another nationality.
00:09:06
Speaker
We're the better banger anyway, so. So obviously I contacted the enabled archaeology group because I wanted to hear people's stories who maybe didn't have their perspectives, their voices told. Now you said in the email that you kind of were quite open, you wanted to kind of maybe
00:09:32
Speaker
share your experiences with having ADHD and how that kind of impacted and has affected the way in which you've done your degree and you kind of live your life. Because and so I just want to put the kind of floor to you and say, you know, in what ways do you feel that people don't understand ADHD? What are the kind of myths that are there? And, you know, what do people think about it?
00:10:01
Speaker
from your perspective? People think that those with ADHD are not going to sit down and not going to listen and going to butt in constantly and not have any interest in reading and spending time doing things that involve like traditional academic things like traditional settings. So sitting down at a desk and reading books for hours and hours and hours and I think that that's
00:10:27
Speaker
something that people hear over and over again about ADHD and so do people with ADHD so we end up not going into university and dispelling those myths because we're listening to those myths and it becomes its own like self-fulfilling prophecy kind of thing.
00:10:42
Speaker
As I understand it, things like ADHD are very much dependent on the individual. They're always like a different kind of experience for everyone. When did you kind of know that something was different? Or when did you know that you had ADHD?
00:11:00
Speaker
I'm very fortunate that my mum is a behavioural specialist so I knew that from a pretty early age but I was only diagnosed when I was 16 because we realised that I did want to go to university and dispel all of those myths so I needed a diagnosis to get the help that I would need to be able to get through university and my A levels.
00:11:19
Speaker
When you talk about the diagnosis helping, what kind of happened after that diagnosis? What were you then able to be, how were you then enabled through that diagnosis to better kind of like, to help you? What happened then?
00:11:39
Speaker
Well they started me off on medication which makes me, you take in the morning and then you feel a bit more like you can sit down and you can focus and it slows your brain down. When you've got ADHD it's like living with a thousand mile an hour brain so the medicine sort of just helps ease that.
00:11:57
Speaker
I stopped taking it after a while because it does get rid of your appetite and it kind of makes you, it's like being a zombie for weeks and weeks and weeks on end because you're taking it every day and you don't sleep properly because it's a stimulant. So I stopped taking that and wound up just relying on help, like social help. So I would have a mentor in the college that I was at before I went to uni and I'd go and see her on a Monday morning and we would write lists about what kind of things I would be achieving that week, how many words I might put on this essay and stuff like that and just sort of pace myself
00:12:28
Speaker
and stay grounded and check in with her every weekend. I've had the same support just like that all the way through my undergrad and also into my master's now and it's much better than medication. I've not taken medication since my A levels and that's the way that I've got through.
00:12:42
Speaker
If you had one thing to say to people who didn't know about ADHD or have those preconceptions about them, what's the one message that you would have for those people who just don't know about ADHD? What one thing would be beneficial, do you think, for them to know? I think I'm a walking contradiction. I think that I would ask them to look, because there's loads of us that have got degrees and we've got ADHD. So it's not something that's a barrier to academia anymore. And we can do it.
00:13:12
Speaker
So I'm just wondering, obviously, from my perspective, when I did archaeology at university, I did a couple of digging few pots in the field and stuff like that, but I didn't actually do that much fieldwork.
Field Experiences and Monuments in Britain
00:13:29
Speaker
I didn't go to a field school or anything like that. How was your experience at university? Did you go and love digs? Did you do a lot of digging?
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, Bangor University has its own dig at a site called Mahlianith, which is a double ringwork monument on the top of a hill that dates to the Iron Age. And there's no, the soil in North Wales is very acidic, there's no actual finds, but Ray Carl, our site director there, was able to
00:14:02
Speaker
like a show is hard to fill out all the paperwork and dig properly and stuff like that. And he did turf architecture with this where he would, after we deturfed the site, we would build like a roundhouse so that everybody could sit in it every day and have lunch in this.
00:14:16
Speaker
I think he's just released a book about how to make them. I've got very fond memories of that field school. I camped the entire time on the Hlyn Peninsula, which is a very windy and cold place. So I spent one month camping on my own because I was absolutely adamant that I wasn't going to spend four hours on a coke cherry day. So it's like cooking meals in a little trunger in the evenings and then getting a lift onto the side every day, being completely knackered, but I loved it.
00:14:42
Speaker
That's amazing. That's such an experience as well. Everyone else had the sense to go on the couch. What top tips for living in a tent on the Welsh coast do you have?
00:15:03
Speaker
Oh god, definitely need a good tent. That tent died after that trip, just because it had been so battered by the wind. But ski outfits, I think, are key. Even our site director, Ray Carr, when it gets a bit cold, he changes from his three-piece suit into a ski outfit with Austria written on the backs of his Austrian, hopefully. So I think ski outfits in the Klim Peninsula are definitely something not to be separated.
00:15:29
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. And if you don't mind me asking, like, what were you, what were you able to cook when you were out there? Every time I got back from the site, the shop was shut. So I just I had people like bringing me tinned food in cooking like that. I really don't know why I did that. Every experience is definitely worth something.
00:15:57
Speaker
What, is that part of a wider, like, is there wider structures past that double ring for it? Or is that really the main piece? So that one's kind of the main one. They've been in a lot of work on this recently. So that's a ringwork enclosing, I think there was like 27 round houses or something like that.
00:16:18
Speaker
that were, they were the rocks that we were digging up, was the walls of that, I shouldn't have specified. So there's that, and then from that site, if you start, because it's on a hill, if you stand there, you can see quite a few other of these monuments of the same style, but smaller. So we think that there's a bit of a culture of these monuments going on.
00:16:36
Speaker
That's interesting. Ring monuments from the Iron Age are quite interesting. And actually, one of the episodes that will be released by the time this is out is with the Caithaness Broch project. I don't know if you're familiar with Brochs. A little bit.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah, the two guys from the Case and S. Brock project, they're very big about their stone monument ring things. I must say it's interesting because all across Britain, you have these interesting monuments that were coming back to monuments again, that seem to kind of capture something in the archaeological imagination. I'd be interested to know, as we mentioned about
00:17:21
Speaker
monumental archaeology being interesting for the public. You said it's a four hour coach ride. Is it kind of out in the middle of nowhere? Yeah, it's a two hour back coach ride. So you're not really getting too many punter, local punters kind of kicking around. It's near Abu Darin. I don't know if you're familiar with the Echlin Peninsula, but it's definitely in the middle of nowhere. But it's like the most beautiful beach is right next door to Mecciano.
00:17:50
Speaker
and there's campsites and all sorts. It's a proper little tourist town, but people will go and stay. It's kind of near Upper Sock, so people will go and stay and be going back from Upper Sock and Upper Durham. So there's lots of, like, sailing surfing. So it's not quite in the middle of nowhere, but it's definitely far from Bangor.
00:18:09
Speaker
I love the seaside. I'm a big fan of the seaside and I'm always up for a good little bit of sailing. I can't surf though. I can surf the web, but not the sea, unfortunately. Yeah, I'll add it to the list of things I need to do. From what you've kind of done through university so far,
Supporting Neurodivergent Students in Archaeology
00:18:34
Speaker
What do you think archaeology could be doing better as a kind of a subject area and academia? What could it be doing better to support people who have ADHD or who have like, I think the term is neurodivergent kind of like, kind of ways of thinking? Are there things that you think that archaeology stuff could do better?
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think that archaeology could really, in terms of the academic side of archaeology, could be following the way that Bangor and Sheffield have chosen to do it. I went to those universities because I saw the way that they were teaching and thought, well, that'll work for me. Because Bangor goes on a lot of fieldwork trips and we're constantly going on study and, oh god, what are they called? Field trips. At Bangor University we were constantly going on field trips.
00:19:26
Speaker
to see like stone circles or like little monuments or have a look at some coasts that was a bit interesting because it's absolutely shed loads of archaeology around that area and it's really easy to get to so we were constantly doing that and that was really helpful that's definitely the way that I learned is to look at things and think about them and being them which is we're coming back to the effect of monuments and archaeology again and then Sheffield University I went to because you can see
00:19:50
Speaker
on their website they're doing videos of smelting and they're out there and people are in the lab making bits of ceramic stuff and we're learning photography by using the microscopes not thinking about the microscopes and stuff like that so it's so hands on.
00:20:04
Speaker
I think that archaeology should be that, because archaeology is a hands-on discipline. But I see a lot of universities seem to be trying to make it into an essay-based, very academic thing, and I think that's to do with the self-esteem of archaeology at the moment. It thinks that it's being phased out, it's not cool anymore, and it's an expensive hobby rather than an actual discipline and stuff like that. But I think that everybody could really be following the trend of Bangor and Sheffield.
00:20:30
Speaker
I want to pick up on that, the feeling of archaeology as an expensive hobby because unfortunately for me, archaeology is an expensive hobby because I started doing archaeology jobs and I finished doing archaeology jobs very quickly because I just wasn't in the place to be going around the country
00:20:55
Speaker
jumping from job to job to job from week to week to week and I just I it wasn't for me which I mean you know these are the decisions you have to make and I think I always I was worried that archaeology is very narrow in what it understands and accepts and especially because like nowadays it feels very much that like
00:21:23
Speaker
planning policy hangs by a thread. There's a kind of move to, well, we don't need all these regulations, we don't need all these checks and balances and hey, if we dig up a Roman grave site, we've got lots of those. On the legislative political side of things, I think archaeology
00:21:48
Speaker
needs to make a better voice for itself. And I just, I mean, I come from a, I fell in love with archaeological theory. That's like, that's what kept me going. When I started reading about like, Ian Hodder, Shanks and Tilly, like, you know, really, seriously, that that's the little blue book for me. Like, I've read it like seven or eight times, like, I can probably start.
00:22:15
Speaker
But that's what changed it for me because I actually came in as a chemistry, in a chemistry degree, I actually was converted to archaeology with chemistry by the end of it. And that was because of archaeological theory. But then when I went on site, it was like, what's the point of archaeological theory? I'm like,
00:22:37
Speaker
because it's important to know about what we do. We're digging in the ground, you know? And I think there's this weird kind of juggling act that archaeology does between people
00:22:49
Speaker
who identifies, oh, well, I'm just digging in the ground and I'm going to find some stuff. And people who are talking about the esoteric ramifications of categorizing and taxonomies of death, these two things are really interesting for me in the way they work together. But as you've pointed out, I think there is a little bit of a crisis in archaeology in so much as it's very much if you don't do
Inclusivity and Barriers in Archaeology Careers
00:23:16
Speaker
a degree in archaeology, it's very unlikely you're going to go and get into archaeology. From your undergrad class, are there a lot of people doing their masters or are they doing other work? Do you keep in contact with them?
00:23:34
Speaker
Not as far as I know. I'm not really in contact with any of them, but there's only seven of us, I think, in my undergrad year of just archaeology, which is the course I was on, obviously. But as far as I know, I don't think anyone's actually really gone on to anything. I know a few people dropped out, and a few people went on to do other things, but I think it might just be me, but I don't really want to say that. No. It's OK. That's what happens.
00:24:02
Speaker
I feel like there should never be a barrier to people who want to study something, who want to go and work somewhere. I don't think there should be artificial barriers. And I think that if there are other barriers that we should be removing those barriers and making it, paving the way for everybody to have that opportunity to engage in what they want to engage with.
00:24:31
Speaker
And I'm always interested to hear how people imagine archaeology could improve in some way. And obviously I've sat on committees for the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists for the last six years. I've been at a number of the conferences.
00:24:52
Speaker
I've heard people talk about archaeology as a commercial endeavour as well as an academic one and I think archaeology is in between state. I feel like there's a lot of people who are
00:25:13
Speaker
seeing it as a dichotomy. People are saying, well, you're either in academia or you're commercial, and it doesn't seem to be the enough variety. So for me, making things better for
00:25:27
Speaker
People who have maybe before now find it difficult to get into archaeology, paving the way and making it easier for those kind of people to come in. Fresh ideas, fresh blood, fresh understanding. I think that can actually be very, very good in moving the needle on certain issues in archaeology.
00:25:47
Speaker
one of those issues being that I think as Theresa O'Mahoney who founded the enabled archaeology foundation said and her research showed that people who had disabilities or were not either neurotypical or you know that they were actively discriminated against in both the job market and
00:26:14
Speaker
otherwise and inadvertently discriminated against in other ways, because people had assumptions about them. Yeah, but it's okay. Why are you saying that I thought about the way that if you're asking me to comment on that,
00:26:32
Speaker
I was just thinking, I don't feel that I can comment on that, but I wonder if that's part of the issues that I don't feel that I can comment on that, because if I do, then I might come across as an arrogant MA student, because I really need to guard my undergrad, so I'm fresh out.
00:26:45
Speaker
And I don't like to comment on things particularly too much. I've started to join in on Museums Hour to try and combat that, because I don't know if it's me or if it's archaeology that's making me feel like I shouldn't be commenting. Okay. Talk to me about Museums Hour. Museums Hour? Don't ask me about Museums Hour. I'm still so shy on that. I've come out with a few things, but I found myself repeating the same thing over and over and over again. But I'm so excited that I finally found somewhere.
00:27:15
Speaker
that I can have an opinion without sounding horrendously arrogant because I really just finished my undergrad. I haven't had time to form any opinions yet and I haven't been encouraged to have any because you're still encouraging a toddler to have opinions. That's what it feels like when you're fresh out of your undergrad, I suppose.
00:27:34
Speaker
Do you know what's really funny? You say that because, well, one of my last episodes I spoke to Rosie Loftus, who is one of the admins for the mentoring women in archaeology and heritage groups.
00:27:53
Speaker
who talked actually at length about imposter syndrome and how sometimes people feel like they're unable or unskilled enough to actually contribute to a conversation and to talk.
00:28:13
Speaker
I think at the end of my undergrad is when I started this podcast and I had a lot of opinions, which I still hold actually, funny enough. And I was okay saying them because I was enthused and I was
00:28:30
Speaker
I was energized to make a platform. I've done podcasts now, not archeology ones, but podcasting in general for 12 years, maybe 13 years. I've done it for a long time. And so for me, I know how to put together a platform. I know what to do to put the editing together, what to say, how to keep it interesting, what questions to ask, how to draw somebody in.
00:28:56
Speaker
and like because I've had those skills and I've taken time to hone them it means when I do have a thing to talk about and think about I'm okay saying it but
00:29:09
Speaker
I need to sometimes feel like, I need to sometimes not say things if you get what I mean, like sometimes it's better for me to create a platform for somebody rather than to be the one, only one talking. So I'm quite interested, what sort of things do you like talking about on museums are that you don't usually feel like you can say?
00:29:32
Speaker
So there was one, I actually missed the one that was on disability the other week, probably because of my disability, but the one this week was on, I think it was International Museums Day, it was yesterday, so people were talking about how can we improve museums and how can we
00:29:48
Speaker
like move forward after this situation. Sorry, I don't want to work. It's okay, you can mention it. Should I say that again? No, you can say it. It's okay. So what do you think museums can do better? Like what
00:30:10
Speaker
I mean, for me personally, museums, as we know them today, I think fundamentally need to change in both structure and form.
Reforming Museum Structures and Exhibits
00:30:21
Speaker
I think, I mean, okay, take this example, right? I've got a museum, I've got, you know, 10,000 items in the museum, okay?
00:30:34
Speaker
I take all 10,000 items out of that one building and I put it in another building, arranged in a similar way. Is the original building the museum or is it the collection of items arranged in a certain way the museum? Oh, that's a really good question. And from that, I would kind of posit that I would argue that the building is
00:31:03
Speaker
technically part of the experience of a museum. But this idea that the museum is a set defined thing, like an object, I think is the problem. I think that we're always trying to build a museum to a set specification, you know, we're trying to box it into, this is a museum, this is not a museum.
00:31:28
Speaker
And I think what it means is that these structures that the museum forms, you know, like you've got your visitor welcoming staff, then you've got your curators, then you've got your senior creators, then you've got conservators, you've got this hierarchical structure within the museum.
00:31:47
Speaker
that reflects upon itself the idea that certain people have to be in charge of other people to manage other people to manage other people and somebody is at the top. And sometimes I feel as if, because people feel that's a natural way of organizing things, that then bleeds into the interpretations and the presentations within the museums. So I would actually like to see a museum that doesn't
00:32:15
Speaker
that works to undo those kind of assumptions and presents itself and actually operates itself in a different way.
00:32:23
Speaker
I mean, we all know about museums where we can see the idea of a museum playing up to a certain kind of like fad, but not actually doing anything. You know, like for example, you know, disowning fossil fuel companies, but at the same time, you know, taking money from funds in fossil fuel kind of stocks.
00:32:49
Speaker
You know, things like that, kind of, you're doing it for the show. And I'm actually interested to see how museums survive after this. What do you think about museum? What is a museum to you?
00:33:06
Speaker
I absolutely love museums but one of the things I was thinking about our museums yesterday is that I feel quite a lot of guilt when I'm in a museum and it's because when you're walking around and you're looking at the exhibits and there's your object and then below it there's some information that's printed on a piece of paper not useful when you have ADHD and I look terrible when I'm trying to focus on a museum but I'm looking at my phone every five seconds because I'm not really getting enough stimulation
00:33:30
Speaker
or like I'm looking away and I'm spending three seconds looking at something and then going off to something else but then one thing I'll spend five minutes looking at because that's the thing that I'm super interested in but it's not because I wasn't interested in everything else it's because it just wasn't done in a captivating way. The kind of museums that will captivate me are things with stimulating like ways of
00:33:53
Speaker
talking to the public about what's going on so I really enjoy the use of technology museums at the moment where screens are a bit more
00:34:02
Speaker
a bit more commonplace with more like colour and bright and movement and like interactive exhibits. And I hate that some of that is seen as just for kids. And when it's not, I think that that could be used for all adults. And I think that most teenagers, if you ask them, not children, will find museums boring. It's because you're either a museum for children or you're a museum for adults. And there doesn't seem to be this middle ground where you're a museum for people that want to be engaged and don't want to read black and white text constantly.
00:34:32
Speaker
So I think the museums will definitely be, I think that in the current situation museums are being pushed to work online and in that interactive way to make things engaging for the public that aren't actually in the museum. And I think that that's going to translate in a really interesting way when we move back into the museum because we'll be encouraged to use that technology again.
00:34:52
Speaker
Because we've got used to it now. Do you not worry that after this situation, which both will not mention, that team like, it'll just go back to normal. I love the fact that people are engaging with new technology, but I'm always concerned that people are waiting for things to go back to normal and they just want to go back to the everyday. But normal wasn't good.
00:35:18
Speaker
It wasn't. It was fundamentally flawed in almost every direction that you look at, especially in terms of museums. So we've not moved. We've got this traditional idea of a museum that came about after like Victorian Curio cabinets. And we've just made those cabinets bigger and put like little text in numbers next to them. And it's not worked. It's still not working 150 years on. And we've not changed it. So we're just going to go back to that and carry on. It doesn't suit everybody.
Artifact Repatriation and Museum Impact
00:35:44
Speaker
This show is very, very much pro repatriation of everything in every museum. I don't know. What's your view on repatriation? I'm very pro repatriation. Definitely think that we should be just sending everything back is ridiculous that we've even gone on this long.
00:36:06
Speaker
But if you send one thing back, you send everything back, you send everything back, then we won't have anything in the museum, which is really upsetting because you've actually worked on sites in the UK that could be in a museum. I mean, obviously, it'd be good for those sites to be in a Welsh museum.
00:36:27
Speaker
rather than the British Museum. But maybe that's one of the problems is that the British Museum is such a focal point that other museums are not getting the access in the funding. I always find it a very disingenuous kind of argument that, well, if you put it in the British Museum, so many more people will get to see it.
00:36:50
Speaker
But I think it comes back to, you know, when you were talking about the stone circles and you with your quote unquote, your words, hippie parents. Sorry. I think I think those memories are personal and they're much more powerful. I mean,
00:37:11
Speaker
a lot of different, I feel like there's a difference between seeing artifacts from far away lands captured under colonial rule and brought here and you're preserving them, you know, as opposed to being from those places and seeing the history of your own kind of country and your own history in a sense.
00:37:38
Speaker
um i mean yeah i think like i think children's museums you showed them something that's from greece 5000 years ago like egypt is kind of an exception everyone seems to identify with that kind of stuff well not identify with it but
00:37:52
Speaker
definitely engage with it. But stuff from like random countries and random time periods, they're not important. It's just that they're not important to 10 year olds. And these are people that we're like planting the seeds in and we're trying to get inspired to become archaeologists and the next generation and all of that. What's the point in having that kind of like interactive exhibit that's aimed at children, if they're not presenting something that's actually going to engage them and inspire them?
00:38:20
Speaker
Why isn't Benjamin interested in the 13th century farmers in Bordeaux? Hey, hey, those are really – I don't even know. That's one of the examples I use, is 13th century farmers in Bordeaux in France. I want to know, has anybody researched them? What can you tell me about them? It's like the same thing as the other challenge I have for people is the archaeology of brushing teeth.
Quirky Archaeological Interests and Speculative Fiction
00:38:48
Speaker
and I've asked that consistently for years and actually last September I said, you know these kind of interesting questions like the archaeology of brushing teeth and somebody's like, oh I know somebody's actually done that. I'm like, oh my god, what? You know, these are interesting questions or like the archaeology of tea, you know, obviously, colonial practice as well but
00:39:15
Speaker
in China, obviously, you have thousands of years of history of tea. And that's something that's like a day thing that people come in contact with day in day. And but I don't think people really think about the history that's involved there. That teeth brushing things got me. Do you know with people have started using wooden toothbrushes. If you were digging a site where the teethbrushes were laid out really well in the stratigraphy,
00:39:45
Speaker
And you would think that people started to use toothbrushes less because the wooden toothbrushes would have decomposed by then. So you'd be like, oh, these people have stopped brushing their teeth so much. This must be a cultural difference. Cultural difference. Yeah. No, the change has happened.
00:40:02
Speaker
was it the toaster tradition for burials? Like that joke, yeah, bury with a toaster so that when archaeologists dig us up, you know, they'll be like, oh, the toaster tradition, they were buried with their favorite, you know, items. I'm gonna swallow a key, I wanna know what happened. Next thing they'd be excavating, it'd be like a key. What is this for?
00:40:26
Speaker
But it doesn't unlock anything and so it's forever a mystery. And then you're on whatever is the equivalent of the ancient aliens of the 21st century.
00:40:42
Speaker
But you see that speculative fiction is so fun with archaeology. I think it's such a great way of playing around with history because I really, really absolutely hate this kind of like history as a set event. Oh, this is what happened. This person said this. This person thought this. This is what they did. And that's what happened. You know, this kind of weird kind of like, that's just how it is history, which it's not.
00:41:11
Speaker
It's not. Well, it's easy to digest. It's easy to absorb and people don't have to engage with it. They can just listen. It's like fast food history. Do you have any pet peeves of fast food archeology? Is there anything in particular that? I hate when people just sensationalize something for the absolute sake of it.
00:41:36
Speaker
Every year there's something new and stupid about Stonehenge and they're like, oh uncovering the mystery of Stonehenge, Channel 4 tonight. That comes on at least once a year. It's the same program done in a completely different thing with different people and they come out with the same thing. So you've not uncovered anything, you've come up with the exact same conclusions and sold it to Channel 4 watchers again. But that's, I mean, that's a product of, you know, like,
00:41:58
Speaker
things that people are familiar with they like and so that stuff gets like a lot of attention and so because it gets a lot of attention other people are like oh that's getting a lot of attention oh that's I like that and the cycle continues it just keeps growing and it means that you have this disparity between like sites that are really famous that people know and so they like because they know and other sites that don't get the attention
00:42:25
Speaker
Yeah. That's why I like calling Stonehenge the English Ness of Brogar, you know? And Brogdar, Brogdar, I need to say it correctly. I've never been to the Ness of Brogdar, but I need to go. Is it like, is it like, is it the best? Oh, no, it's not the best. Is it almost the best stone circle in Britain? Yeah, it's definitely like top five.
00:42:53
Speaker
top five. I feel like we should have the top of the pop music on. Top five stone circles. I would say Nessa Brogder would be there. Stonehenge not even top ten. Let's just put that out there. Not even top ten.
Future Research Plans in Ancient Technologies
00:43:15
Speaker
So I want to come around to experimental archaeology because you've said you really, really into kind of doing stuff like experimental archaeology. You kind of like things that are something you can kind of use your hands and stuff like that. So you mentioned in the email about bellows. Can you tell me a little bit about the bellows?
00:43:42
Speaker
I can give you like a brief summary of my intentions for my dissertation if you like. That would be perfect. And then we can talk about smelting. Yes, okay. So bellows. Therefore smelting, I'm looking at a site in Crete where we have some evidence of, or some potential evidence of some pot bellows, which is basically a ceramic bellow with a leather appendage on the top
00:44:07
Speaker
used to pump air through the bellows that acts as like a one-way valve. So I'm going to investigate that design with maybe three different kinds of materials. I'm considering using stomachs and I'm not sure how gory that's going to get but I think it'd be really interesting. I've seen some parallels with bellows and bagpipes and they have used stomachs with bagpipes. I think it's called a sheep's bag bagpipe
00:44:33
Speaker
where they still use sheep's stomachs for the main part of the bagpipe. And I think that that seems to translate pretty well over to bellows, so there's obviously some parallels. So I'm investigating bagpipe designs used as bellows, if that makes any sense. Yeah, yeah. I mean, does that mean you get to go to Crete?
00:44:56
Speaker
I just get to sit on my patio and put blood all over it. Let me try and think. Where do you even get a sheep stomach from? Do you ask the butcher? I was hoping the butcher would give me one. I have to use a food grade one because of health and safety, so that's going to be interesting.
00:45:20
Speaker
I can't eat it, I'm not allowed to make bellows out of it. Okay, interesting. How do you even, like, what made you kind of think, yeah, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get sheep's stomachs and look at bellows. You mentioned about doing metallurgy and smelting. I mean, that seems to be something quite interesting to you. What in particular is it about, like, the smelting process that really interests you?
00:45:51
Speaker
I love it. Originally for my thesis I wanted to do something about the performance aspects of smelting. There's a few cultures on the videos, there's obvious gender roles, so the women are dancing and the men are pumping the bellows to smelt the furnace.
00:46:07
Speaker
as they're pumping there's quite a rhythmic noise that people are starting to play music and the women are starting to dance and i thought that was really interesting and you obviously get um if you do it at night obviously it's going to be quite a show because the fires glow there's a going and there's the birth fitting canal as you call it will be glowing with um slag and suffering out of it so it's quite an obvious performance and it's um going to be quite amazing to look at if you were at a smelt of like a ritual kind i think it'd be really interesting so originally for my thesis i wanted to look at that but
00:46:36
Speaker
current climate, I can't do that anymore. So I've had to do something that doesn't involve fire. You could just dig up part of the garden, you know, make a little furnace. So will you be eventually testing? So you're going to be testing out with sheep stomachs, what other materials would might have been used? What kind of materials are you looking at, possibly?
00:46:58
Speaker
I think sheep's stomach is probably the major one, but leather definitely, obviously it's quite, if you treat that, it could be quite airtight and work quite well for that kind of thing. And my third fabric, I'm not sure, I'm going to have to look into it. I saw something in my reading today about someone using, this is reading about bagpipes, but there was some historical evidence of someone using a dog's posterior.
00:47:23
Speaker
as a bagpipe, which is not something that I'm going to investigate, but it does show you there's quite a wide variety of animal material that you could use for this. Yeah, that is quite an odd, oddly specific. I do want to know what was the thought process in like, behind that. Yeah, I don't want to know what the process was.
00:47:48
Speaker
Oh that's good, that's good. And actually just going back to smelting, so you've smelted iron and what else have you actually prepared? So far just the iron, we've just been casting for an experiment for my experimental archaeology module, we've just been casting chocolate into moulds investigating the temper that would create the best mould
00:48:12
Speaker
to it's basically just like an ingenious way of experimenting during the lockdown because obviously we can't use metal or fire so we've cast chocolate into moulds but it's been really interesting actually watching how they respond because we have an inside group for the control and an outside group so my outside group got rained on and I think that's actually made my moulds better and like I've been investigating how clear the chocolate cast comes out and some of my clearest chocolate casts were definitely from the outside group. Okay that's interesting. So so far I've just ironed chocolate.
00:48:43
Speaker
That's fantastic. So that's something you recommend. Leave your iron out in the rain and the chocolate would be better. You're ceramic molds. You know what? That is not information you're going to get from any other podcast, OK? That only here. Well, thank you very much for sitting down with me and talking to me. And I wish you all the best in your billows research.
00:49:10
Speaker
And yeah, thank you very much.
00:49:41
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.