Hamish
If you were to ask my mum, she’d tell you that from an early age I was always interested in ‘old things’ and loved being taken for an outing to the Canterbury Museum (though, with the exception of Tash Pen Khonsu, the resident Egyptian mummy, as a wee fella in a push chair I was more enamoured by the dinosaur displays and the taxidermy birds). Studying archaeology at university took my love and appreciation for history and the places and things from the past to the next level, and I was super lucky as an undergraduate to be involved in awesome digs, and to have been taught the ins and outs of proper excavation techniques by some of the best (thanks, Richard and Chris).
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Growing up in Christchurch I had no idea that I would one day get to dig up so much of the history of my hometown, nor that the catalyst for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity would be born out of something so violent and destructive. The earthquakes transformed the home city of my memory into a city anew, one strangely familiar yet unmistakeably foreign at the same time. In a way, this is a bit like what historical archaeology has revealed to us about what life in Christchurch was like in the first 50 years of settlement.
I love my job because I get the chance to travel back in time (metaphorically speaking), and through the power of field work (not through the power of the flux capacitor) bring some insight into what life was really like in olden days Christchurch (and sometimes olden days Lyttelton also). Like any job, doing archaeology has its challenges, though thankfully here in Christchurch we don’t have to worry about runaway boulders, snakes, Thugee cults or Nazis. Engaging with people I meet on site about what archaeology is, what it looks like, and why if some is found on a works site it is dealt with appropriately gives me a good buzz. As a precious and finite resource, I get an even bigger buzz when I find out an archaeological feature doesn’t need to be excavated in entirety, and can be left in situ for future archaeologists to investigate.
