What archaeological projects are you working on at the moment?
A fairly wide range in cultures and time periods. My everyday work is colonial Sydney, from the excavation and conservation of Dawes Point Battery (1791), to the industrial archaeology of the Eveleigh Railyards (1884-1984). In addition I have recently completed a 15-year landscape archaeology project in Northern Portugal, from Iron Age to Mediaeval, and am currently excavating at the world’s largest archaeological site, the city of Angkor in Cambodia, as part of Sydney University’s Greater Angkor Project.

http://acl.arts.usyd.edu.au/projects/externalprojects/urbanangkor.html

Tell us about one of your most interesting archaeological discoveries.
In Bahrain, 1983, another Sydney University excavation- this time burial mounds dating to around 2000BC. One mound (they usually cover individual burials) revealed first a bronze spearhead (“warrior”?), and then part of the pelvis of the occupant (lying on its side) which from the bone’s morphology appeared to be a young male. Just below this were uncovered the tiny bones of a baby cupped inside the other side of the pelvis. These were carefully removed together, a theory proposed by the physical anthropologist present, and then confirmed at the local maternity hospital: this was the skeleton of a very young woman whose pelvis was not sufficiently mature to allow for the birth of her child. Both mother and child died in what must have been an extremely painful childbirth, the baby having partially emerged. Both were then buried together, with apparently no attempt made to remove the baby from the birth position. And the spear?????

Tell us about a funny/disastrous/amazing experience that you have had while doing archaeology.
I think all archaeologists can combine experiences over their careers to make themselves sound like Indiana Jones. Mine? Being inside the chamber of a tomb when the entrance stones collapsed, being in a pit when your workers throw in scorpions (and learning only later that their stingers had been removed), having a nest of baby snakes fall out of a wall beside you whilst you are digging, being swept down a stream and wedging yourself at the top of a waterfall (but seeing your camera and other equipment plummet over the edge), surveying and excavating in a minefield, discovering unexploded mortar bomb shells, discovering spent bullet cartridges near fragments of clothes protruding from the ground in a country where mass executions and burials were de rigueur in the 1970s.

What’s your favourite part of being an archaeologist?
Discovery. Finding material evidence that adds to our knowledge of the past, that isn’t recorded elsewhere.

Follow up reading:
Johnson, A. W. (2003) Showdown in the Pacific: A Remote Response to European Power Struggles in the Pacific, Dawes Point Battery, Sydney, 1791-1925. Historical Archaeology, Volume 37, Part 1.