A BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGIST’S
David Cleasby
staircases, hands on cold stone, to stand on the battlements, imagining ourselves as castle guards staring out towards advancing armies. Touching real things real people made and touched connected me to the past more directly than my Roman Often when I tell people what my occupation is and Greek textbooks did from my warm sofa. With they get excited and tell me they have always great enthusiasm one cold spring day I got the opwanted to be one also, and then ask me what is portunity to do archaeology. We walked up and the best treasure I have found, and occasionally down an English farmer’s muddy field for 7 hours, what it is like to be Indiana Jones! I find such con- staring hard at the ground, trying to pick out meanversations a mixed pleasure. On the one hand, as ingful shapes. My friend found 6 nice arrowheads! an archaeologist, ‘treasure’ is not defined in terms I got backache and very wet because I’d forgotten of shiny items and their monetary value, but more my raincoat and the lessons of English weather. Kuva: David Cleasby Not an ideal start, in reconstructing but it introduced the lives of socime to rigorous eties, its people’s survey method, stories. On the and I wanted that other hand, I same feeling of am pleased that discovering the people take an past I saw in his interest, and I eye. have the opportuLater I was fornity to open their tunate to get to eyes to the wider Cambridge Uninature of archaeversity, and to be ology. Recently, tutored by some having moved of the brightest to Finland, and Exploring Bodiam castle with Mum and Dad. minds in British reflecting on 30 archaeology. I years of different experiences, I have come to see I have accumu- enjoyed trying to absorb all the various theories in lated a more personal form of ‘treasure’. My mind archaeology, but could not wait for my first excaspun back to what drew me to studying the past vation. So in summer 1985 I set off for Greece for and archaeology, and my first few experiences as not only my first dig, but also first time abroad, and as a lone traveller. In Athens I visited the Acropoa ‘digger’. For me it started with my dad taking me to lis, adding a sense of its majesty and scale, to the explore castles and ruins every Sunday afternoon image from my books and imagination. I debated or when on holiday. Despite both being scared with myself in the Agora where Socrates explained of enclosed spaces and heights, we climbed dark his philosophies. I also got arrested (and released) Archaeologist/Maritime Archaeologist. Currently on work internship at Pirkanmaa Maakuntamuseo, Museokeskus Vapriikki, Tampere.
2019 │ MUSEOKELLO
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