Interview with Barbara Ottaway

Interview with Barbara Ottaway, by Caroline Hall.

What are the contents of your pockets right now?
I don't believe this. Nothing in one, a pound note in another and, (my favourite), a miniature pen - knife which is very useful.

Have you ever had a nickname?
Would I tell you? No I wouldn't tell you.

So you have?
I have but I wouldn't tell you.

When did you first realise you were an archaeologist?
When I started to bore my friends by talking about Hittites.

What age were you?
It was thirty years ago.

What's your vision of the perfect archaeological project?
For me? A perfect copper age workshop with everything intact, absolutely everything. It would be wonderful.

Boots or sandals? Jumpers or cardigans? Tweed and corduroy or leather and denim?
I don't know. Boots and sandals I should think.

If you could pursue another career, what would it be?
I don't know - the same but different aspects of it.

What's the most outrageous or embarrassing thing you've ever done during fieldwork?
I have been trying to think about this. I'll tell you that it involved bails of hay, but I leave the rest to your imagination.

Who makes you laugh?
Mike Parker Pearson, Colin Merrony but also politicians.

Wine and chocolate, or beer and chips?
Wine.

What was the first record you bought?
Something by Bach.

If you could be reincarnated, how would you like to return?
Definitely as a cat.

Why a cat?
They have a wonderful life, being stroked. They are lovely, I have a beautiful black cat, and they have a very good life.

What do students think your funniest or most annoying habits?
Misquoting proverbs, I always get them wrong.

What book do you wish you had written?
Something by Bruce Chatwin, the short stories.

What is your field walking fantasy?
Coming across the perfect workshop again. Definitely, with all the tools there, everything so that you could just read it like a book. It would be fantastic.

Which word or phrase do you most overuse?
Probable, possible, perhaps.

Name three items that you would like to be interred with?
None. I am going to be burned, cremation for me. I am not going to leave anything for archaeologists; I am going to be mean. My ashes are going to be scattered over the Galgenberg.

Which cartoon character do you most identify with?
Do you know the lost consonants in the Saturday Guardian? There are some wonderful cartoons, I really like those. I think it's me always forgetting it all.

What luxury item would you take on your desert island dig?
Soap and music, I can't think of anything else. You're only allowed one are you?

Yes.
Music then

You would have to take the equipment as well and you would have to choose a specific record.
Oh just one, oh dear, I would get pretty bored. I think something classical and I could listen to that once a day.

What wouldn't you do for money?
Write another book, ten years excavation, never again.

What do you wish you had paid more attention to at school?
English, that's why I came here in the first place because I failed my English.

Barbara Ottaway, MA, PhD is a reader in Archaeology and is head of the Research School at the University of Sheffield. Her research interests include early copper metallurgy and the prehistory of central and south - eastern Europe. Her field projects include excavations and surveys in southern Germany and Austria. She has recently published ‘A Changing Place: The Galgenberg in Lower Bavaria from the fifth to the first millennium BC’, BAR International Series 752.

Caroline Hall is currently studying for her PhD at Sheffield University, reconstructing woodland management practice in the Pindos Mountains, N.W. Greece having completed an MSc in Environmental Archaeology and Palaeoeconomy also at Sheffield University. She can be contacted at PRP98CIH@sheffield.ac.uk