What archaeological projects are you working on at the moment?
I’m working with colleagues, Judith Field, Beth Charles, Richard Fullagar, and Michael Slack on the interaction of Aboriginal people and a range of extinct animals known as megafauna. My focus is on the megafauna bones from some of the key Australian sites where bones and artefacts are found together. These sites are Cuddie Springs, north-central NSW, Lancefield, Victoria, and Riversleigh, north-west Queensland. I’m also writing up previous research based on Aboriginal use of forests, which I carried out in south-western WA. This was a beautiful area to work in and provides some of the earliest evidence for Aboriginal occupation in Australia.

Tell us about one of your most interesting archaeological discoveries.
There are many great discoveries working in archaeology, especially when you find something last used by someone thousands of years ago. For me one was finding hearths (fireplaces) made by Aboriginal groups in a cave in south-western WA. The hearths were 17,000 years old and were probably campfires, because we found food remains like burnt bones and burnt emu eggshell, and stone chips produced by people making or resharpening stone tools. We also found a couple of children’s milk teeth, near the fires, which suggested that families with small children had camped there. If we had not been careful to sift all the sediment through fine screens we would have missed evidence like this.

Tell us about a funny/disastrous/amazing experience that you have had while doing archaeology.
I haven’t experienced any disasters, at least not yet, but I’ll never forget a fieldtrip I volunteered on in the Monte Bellos Islands, off the north-west coast of WA. It used to be a nuclear bomb test site, so we didn’t meet too many other people, except for a bunch of pearl farmers who lived out there. After camping on land and getting attacked by rats several nights in a row, we moved to a raft next to the pearl farmer’s house-boat. They hated fish but loved fishing, so we ate coral trout, red emperor, crayfish and other delicacies for a couple of weeks. We did catch some of these ourselves. The archaeology was exciting too (see Veth, P. 1995 Antiquity 69, pages 733-746). The trip back, in a small cray-boat loaded with samples, archaeologists, 11 drunken footballers returning from a weekend trip, the cray-boat skipper and mate, the mate’s girlfriend, her dog, and three aluminium dinghies, is also etched on my memory.

What’s your favourite part of being an archaeologist?
There are many good parts. They include: the combination of intellectual and physical work, the variety of subjects archaeologists have to work in, the knowledge that doing archaeology really offers a unique perspective on the past, and the fun you can have, especially in the field. I really enjoy working with Aboriginal people, and value the relationships I have formed through doing archaeology with them.

Follow up reading:
Dortch, J. in press Palaeo-environmental change and the persistence of human occupation in south-western Australian forests. British Archaeological Reports, International Series.