Twenty Questions

We asked a couple of archaeologists twenty (or thereabouts) questions about life, the universe and their trowel. Here are the results. You may notice that the number of questions does not correspond to the title of this section, we just couldn't decide what to leave out. So much for editing then!

Our interogees this time are Phil Freeman and Jane Downes, who both have enough links with Sheffield for us to be able to bully them into answering.

So take your pick!

The one who likes the Carpenters or the one who likes Roxy Music?

Sorry to have to offer you such a choice! You could skip straight to the button panel, but you'd be missing out!

Phil Freeman's Twenty Questions

What is your favourite (solid) fieldwork food?

Corned beef – seriously!

What are your pocket contents at the moment?

20p

Who would you most like to take out on a date?

So many.

Who is your favourite Spice Girl/Beatle and why?

Geri – She has a nice voice. Lie: Victoria – she's brainy. Ringo – he didn't have a voice.

What is your least appealing habit (what irritates your students most)?

You need to ask them – but my bad and short temper?

Which word or phrase do you most overuse? (and finally, at the end of the day, a game of two halves etc.)

The sooner we start, the sooner we finish; If I start now, somebody is bound to come in; We'll call a halt here.

What was the first record you ever bought?

Roxy Music – Pyjamarama

Beliefs: jumpers or cardigans/ sandals or boots?

Jumpers/Boots

Name three items that you would like to be interred with.

It's cremation for me.

Where would you most like to carry out fieldwork and why?

Tuscany, a villa, near a brewery/winery/restaurant, with a swimming pool, satellite, no finds, no structures – a problem that will take many years thinking about before I can explain why there's nothing there.

What's the most outrageous/embarrassing thing you've ever done?

Party – sixth form. Drink – excess. Clothes – removed. You can guess the rest – it ended in tears, parents and cheers from my contemporaries on the following Monday.

What wouldn't you do for money?

Hate money – can't get rid of it fast enough.

If you had to start a new cult, who or what would be your idol?

John Barrett

The subject of Phil's adulation.

Which musical instrument would you most like to play?

Violin

What would you rather find – stone axe, metal axe or a crisp £20 note and why?

The note.

Have you ever inhaled?

Of the rarefied atmosphere of academia? Yes – a couple of sly drags. Of substances? No – except a cigar once – I hated it.

What is your favourite tipple?

BEER BEER BEER (especially Wards).

Who or what is your fieldwalking fantasy?

The beer at the end of the day.

What do you wish you had paid more attention to at school?

The teachers.

Which cartoon character do you most identify with? – TinTin, Captain Caveman, Fred Flintstone, Asterix, Thelma from Scooby Doo etc.

Homer Simpson.

Describe your most interesting find

Life is getting shorter as I get older.

Have you ever said "I've found it!" and lived to regret it?

No.

How large is your trowel?

Very small and aged. First used in '76.

What/who makes you laugh?

Too many to mention.

Which book do you wish you had written?

Fragments from Antiquity by John Barrett

What part of your appearance do you most dislike?

Used to be my visage, now my expanding stomach.

When did you realise you were an archaeologist?

Am I?

What other career would you have chosen if not in archaeology?

Footballer

How long were you a student?

Still am – ho ho.

What is your favourite animal?

Dave Bell

What luxury item would you take on your desert island dig?

My portable CD player – with all the added bits.

Do you have a nickname / what do other people call you?

I dread to think – something like "That arrogant git"?

©Phil Freeman

Jane Downes' Twenty Questions

What is your favourite (solid) fieldwork food?

macaroni pies

What are your pocket contents at the moment?

Nothing – they're mock pockets.

Who would you most like to take out on a date?

Jim Symonds – both of us dressed in pink to Yates Wine Bar.

Jane's dream date?

Which word or phrase do you most overuse? (and finally, at the end of the day, a game of two halves etc.)

"And I think you know that"

What was the first record you ever bought?

Carpenters – and still adding to the collection.

Beliefs: jumpers or cardigans/ sandals or boots?

skinny rib jumpers, strappy sandals

Name three items that you would like to be interred with.

Plastic lobster, family photos, a spade.

Where would you most like to carry out fieldwork and why?

The Knowes of Trotty, Orkney – wouldn't everyone love to dig a huge barrow cemetery?

What's the most outrageous/embarrassing thing you've ever done?

Can't remember.

What wouldn't you do for money?

Walk barefoot on seaweed, be unkind to (most) animals.

If you had to start a new cult, who or what would be your idol?

Dolly Parton

Which musical instrument would you most like to play?

My Hammond organ better than I do.

What would you rather find – stone axe, metal axe or a crisp £20 note and why?

A metal axe – I already have the other two.

Have you ever inhaled?

Never in Sheffield centre if I can help it.

What is your favourite tipple?

Stella

Who or what is your fieldwalking fantasy?

Field walking vineyards in southern France.

What do you wish you had paid more attention to at school?

Needlework, Spanish

Which cartoon character do you most identify with? – TinTin, Captain Caveman, Fred Flintstone, Asterix, Thelma from Scooby Doo etc.

Minnie the Minx

Describe your most interesting find

A still, sunny day digging a cist alone and finding a pristine white stone axe – very interesting for all sorts of academic reasons I certainly won't detail.

How large is your trowel?

A whopping 5" – that way no one walks off with it.

What/who makes you laugh?

John Shuttleworth, the Betterware catalogue.

Which book do you wish you had written?

Life and Death in the Bronze Age by Cyril Fox.

Pets, children or first years – who would you rather take on a dig?

Loads of pets – donkies, Jack Russells etc.

What part of your appearance do you most dislike?

The nose.

When did you realise you were an archaeologist?

When I realised the level of discomfort I would tolerate.

What other career would you have chosen if not in archaeology?

Owning a boutique.

How long were you a student?

Still am.

What is your favourite animal?

The elephant.

What luxury item would you take on your desert island dig?

sea shell shaped chocolates

Do you have a nickname / what do other people call you?

monkey / small

©Jane Downes

So who is Jane Downes?

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Phil Freeman's biography

After a brilliant career as an undergraduate (storming through his exams with a 40%), PF transferred out of Archaeology at Sheffield, for the Ancient History dept (1978), where he was to remain on and off (with a brief excursion into the murky world of circuit digging ('80 -'82) when it was real archaeology etc. etc. etc.), for the next nine years as man and boy, poacher and gamekeeper. The rites of passage saw him registered there as a postgraduate, interrupted by a year's temporary appointment as lecturer. Such were his accomplishments, the University closed the department. Cast to the winds, there followed temporary posts at Glasgow (Archaeology) and Leeds (Ancient History), before being called back to Sheffield to witness the final death wriggles of the Ancient Historians. The demise took two years. Called back yet again, this time to Glasgow for a year, he ended up working a further three years there lording over the chaos of what was the South Cadbury Castle Project – a creation of John Barrett. The call of the open road however was still sufficiently strong and Barrett was such a truculent colleague, that PF then moved out to Australia in '94 for a years fellowship working on air photos of Jordan at the University of Western Australia where his erstwhile beloved and adored Sheffield supervisor had ended up. Patriotic to the homeland PF ended up in Liverpool (called - "are you free ?") first for one year, then for another three. He languishes there currently.

Research Interests:

PF started off with the history side, especially on how provinces were annexed to and organised in the Roman Empire. Three years of a University scholarship proved that they weren't – to him at least. His subsequent work has tried to explain why this might be the case. As a result of this, he has developed an interest in how acculturation studies have been applied to the question of annexation. Again it has resulted in an iconoclastic approach – wrong questions being asked of the data. Short pieces, written in the Freeman-patented 'Gothic turgid' style have been published on all of these, but the BIG book in him still threatens to crush (out for the next RAE ?). Chickens will come home to roost as the world will get its own back on what he has said in reviews.

Fieldwork

PF has increasingly become concentrated on Jordan over the past 13 years, with surveys in the north of Jordan (paradoxically, in the South Hauran - multi-period landscapes), in the south (on a few Roman forts), and shortly, on a Byzantine church complex in the Wadi Faynan.

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Jane Downes' Biography

Jane Downes is the Assistant Director of ARCUS and is currently running a major project for Historic Scotland – the Orkney Barrows Project. This project is a long running programme of survey and excavation aimed at documenting survival of these monuments and implementing a strategy for their long term protection. Jane is currently studying for a Ph.D. at the Department of Archaeology and Prehistory, University of Sheffield: 'Bronze Age burial rites in the Northern Isles of Scotland'.

Jane (centre) on another dream date with Jim (in pink again) and Anna – another of ARCUS's stylish employees.

Publications

1993 The Distribution and Significance of Bronze Age Metalwork in C.A.I.French and F.M.M.Pryor The South-West Fen Dyke Survey Project 1982-86 East Anglian Archaeology Report No.59, 21-31

1994 with C.Richards The Fieldwalking Exercise, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 123, 162-165

1995 (with J.M Bond, A.R. Braby, S.J. Dockerill, C.C. Richards) Stove Bay: A New Orcadian Grooved Ware Settlement, Scottish Archaeological Review 9/10, 125-130

1995 Linga Fold Current Archeology 142 (March 1995), 396-400

1995 Excavation of a Bronze Age burial at Mousland, Stromness, Orkney Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 124, 141-154

in press: The Shrine at Cadbury Castle - Belief Enshrined? in A.Gwilt and C.Haselgrove (eds) Time, Space and Culture in Iron Age Britain Oxbow

forthcoming: Cremation: A Spectacle and a Journey in J.Downes and T.Pollard (eds) The Loved Body's Corruption: archaeological contributions to the study of human mortality >, co-editor T. Pollard, Cruithne Press

forthcoming: The Loved Body's Corruption: archaeological contributions to the study of human mortality, co-editor T. Pollard, Cruithne Press

forthcoming in J.C.Barrett, P.W.Freeman and A.Woodward: Cadbury Castle Somerset: the later prehistoric and Roman archaeology English Heritage

forthcoming: The investigation of a cairnfield and later buildings at Fall Kneesend, Strathclyde, Glasgow Archaeological Journal 1997

forthcoming: Note on the Roman road at Fall Kneesend, Strathclyde, Glasgow Archaeological Journal 1997

forthcoming with RG Lamb: Living with the past: the archaeology of later prehistoric houses at Sumburgh, Shetland Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

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©assemblage 1997