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John Clegg
What
is your current position?
Associate: Sydney University
Where
did you study archaeology?
Cambridge, Sydney, experience
How
did you become interested in archaeology?
Looking at bones and stones and fossils in the garden and asking about how they got to be like that.
What
archaeological projects are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on Aboriginal rock art around Sydney, particularly on how the engravings relate to fossils and to places where fires were lit.
Tell
us about one of your most interesting archaeological discoveries.
“Important” depends on others’ opinions that I cannot control. Perhaps in a cave in Coygan, near Laugharne, Old South Wales, where it turned out that some hyenas had dragged a corpse into their cave to eat, and stone tools fell out of its pockets marking the way he was dragged in. About 70,000 years ago.
Tell
us about a funny/disastrous/amazing experience that you have had
while doing archaeology.
When my 12-year old son found a big rock engraving no-one had noticed before at a well-known site; working out what some sailors’ designs of the 1840s meant.
What’s
your favourite part of being an archaeologist?
Finding out about stuff.
Follow
up reading:
Stanbury, P. and J. Clegg 1996 A Field Guide to Aboriginal Rock Engravings. Oxford University Press, Melbourne.
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