The Lonely Archaeologist blog was an idea that started during a particularly melodramatic part of my life, so much so, it was suggested I’d touched a curséd artefact in 2015. And after earning my epithet Lonely, I literally found myself in a hole at the Cober Pedy replica at the Opals exhibit at the SA Museum. I’ll be doing a retrospective post on all the activities I got up to associated with the exhibit including alarming security at Night Lab 2015 by crawling through that hole in red ballet flats but the ruby slippers carried me away from Kanasas. Okay Plympton. Close enough. I thought my inaugural post should be about why I love archaeology, history and want to become a science communicator. The fact is, if we don’t teach people about what we do in the heritage and culture industries, we are going to lose the skills that these professions have built up over a very long time.
And we will cease to value the past, but I’m often asked what can the past teach us anyway? For me it comes down to basic humanity and knowing that people today had the same needs and wants across space and cultures. And I want to link with those other people who wanted to know why. That’s my personal quest and question.