What archaeological projects are you working on at the moment?
My main project is in Papua New Guinea where I am part of a group investigating the whole history of human life in the northern coast. My specific interest is in understanding food gathering and farming over the ages and how this has affected the human environment. My work really is a blend of archaeology and botany, so I help excavate sites and then identify the types of plants found there as charcoal. I also work in Turkey on several sites, again investigating the history of farming, plant use and environmental change. I also have a project in Syria, where with several colleagues from ANU I am helping to understand the economic and environmental history of the area surrounding the ancient city of Jebel Khalid, established by the successors of Alexander the Great. I am very busy and spend a lot of time eating airline food!

Tell us about one of your most interesting archaeological discoveries.
For me, the most interesting is still from a project I worked on in 1992 – that seems a long time ago now! It was an early farming site in Hungary and I was excavating a burnt collapsed house with an American colleague. The house was 6500 years old, but because it had never been disturbed the floor was covered in things that had been left as the house was abandoned as it burned. The oven was complete and had a bowl of burnt flour and another of cow ribs waiting to be cooked at the oven door. I remember excavating a pedestal bowl which was cracked, but complete and stood in the same spot on its mud floor that it had occupied when people put it there in the remote past. Bags of grain and peas lay in a storeroom and a clay figurine of a woman lay next to a collection of small cups and clay animals, probably children’s playthings. It all sounds mundane, but I still thrill to think of being the lucky person who was the first to uncover those things in 6500 years.

Tell us about a funny/disastrous/amazing experience that you have had while doing archaeology.
I have had so many good experiences that it is hard to specify one. Archaeology is so diverse and takes you to so many places that the interesting experiences are countless. Something that springs to mind happened in May 2004 on a trip to Fichin village near Vanimo in Papua New Guinea. At the end of the dig we invited the village to a feast, buying a pig and other meat, to say thanks to our hosts. The whole village came (200+ people) and all brought extra food. We were then treated to a whole evening of songs and dances, including line-dancing (!), Christian songs and then a full-scale traditional dance. This went on for several hours and included many people wearing traditional dress, dancing to the kundu (drum). We also were given a number of gifts that people there made for us. It was an unexpected and joyous event and made us feel very welcome. We will all remember it for a long time.

What’s your favourite part of being an archaeologist?
Fieldwork – that is working on excavations in different parts of the world. It’s hard work, but is the very core of what archaeology is for me. Exploration, discovery and the need to live in places for several weeks or even months are all part of fieldwork. Very few people get a chance to live in a variety of places, especially some of the remote areas I have visited. It gives you a chance to get to know a place at a much deeper level that being a tourist and also allows you to meet and get to know people from many different cultures. That can, of course be challenging, but what a joy. That part of being an archaeologist has profoundly changed my world view and my character.

Follow up reading:
Most of my reports are rather obscure, but here’s one that you can get on-line to which I was a major contributor:

http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/catal/Archive_rep99/fairbairnkennedy99.html