Welcome to the fourth of our guest blogs, written upon the subject 'what does history/heritage mean to you'. This week I am delighted to welcome a contribution from Nathalie Cohen. Nat is a professional archaeologist with, I'm sure she won't mind me saying, far too many jobs. She is the National Trust archaeologist for South-east England, covering sites such as Knole, Bodiam castle and Dover. She is also the cathedral archaeologist for Southwark Cathedral, and a key part of the award winning Thames Discovery Programme, now run by Museum of London Archaeology. Oh, and if all of that wasn't quite enough, she is one of those brave souls who have taken on the running and organisation of the Kent Medieval Graffiti Survey. Frankly, I'm quite surprised she had time to write this at all! But write she did - and it is a fantastic read. Enjoy!
History is my business…and yours
by Nat Cohen
As you can see from my biography, I’m an archaeologist by
profession. And yes, I was that geeky
kid who loved reading, especially history books. I even loved learning about kings and queens
and dates of battles; all that stuff. I
was lucky enough to have some great history teachers in primary school, and we
covered a lot of ground – everything from ancient Mesopotamia to the invention
of the telephone. Seeing ‘Raiders of the
Lost Ark’ at a rather impressionable age was a lightbulb moment for me; I don’t
think that before that I’d realised you could have an actual job that involved
hunting for treasure, exploring forgotten landscapes, and teaching at
university, with fighting against Nazi evil an obvious bonus. Apart from a (pretty unrealistic) desire to
be a ballerina, all I wanted to be when I grew up was an archaeologist. It certainly put into context my youthful
attempts to ‘feel the past’ (translation: getting told off for touching things
in museums that I wasn’t meant to) and to ‘access heritage’ (translation: impotent rage at rope barriers across interesting
looking areas and spaces.
If I had to define it further when a confused adult asked why I didn’t want to do something more ‘sensible’ when I left school, I usually said I loved history and wanted to do a job which involved history, but didn’t want to be stuck indoors in a library looking at paperwork all the time (also true).
So, eventually, off to university I went to study medieval
archaeology, and specifically British medieval archaeology. However, this is not necessarily ‘my’
heritage – as an American-born Australian of a very mixed cultural background
(my only known English ancestor is about five generations back) I have no particular
links to England. For my love of
castles, churches and cathedrals you can place the blame squarely at the feet
of my Anglophile parents whose idea of a good holiday once we’d moved to
England involved visiting at least one historic site a day. University just encouraged this obsession (as
it should) – the opportunity to spend time thinking, looking at, doing and
talking about archaeology with like-minded people was something I am very
grateful I was able to do.
In spite of the possibility of
digging on far flung, much more Indiana Jones style sites, I ended up working
in Sussex, Kent, Wiltshire and London. And I loved it. I did some travelling,
digging in Eastern Europe and Israel, and loved it some more. In between times, I worked in a bakery, as a
waitress, and as admin staff at the Institute of Archaeology in London. Then I started to get archaeological jobs –
working in the East Midlands, London and back in Kent and Sussex. After twenty years working on sites, in
museums, in universities, on research projects, for archaeological units, for
charities and for a cathedral, I still love it.
All of the above is by way of preamble really, now to
address the tricky question Matt has set us bloggers – ‘what does history /
heritage mean to me?’ As my title
suggests, history is my livelihood; it’s what I do every day and how I put food
on the table. Early in my career, and very thankful indeed to have a job, I was
interviewed for a newspaper, and I said
that I felt very lucky to be paid to work in archaeology (at the time I was
both an archivist and a digger). During
the interview, I was quoted as saying I would work for nothing in archaeology (i.e.
volunteer) if I couldn’t get a paid job, and was thoroughly upbraided by a
colleague for saying I would be prepared to work for free. With hindsight I think both our views were
correct. I still feel that I am
privileged – working in archaeology is, for all its frustrations and as much as
I might complain about the early mornings, the cold and the rain, on the whole
and in a word, awesome. I get to see
some wonderful things, visit some beautiful places and I get to hang out with
some amazing people as part of my working life.
The number of people I meet who respond with ‘Ah I always wanted to do
that’ when I say I’m an archaeologist reinforces my feeling of being the lucky
one. If I wasn’t employed in the
‘heritage sector’ I have no doubt I’d be out volunteering any chance I got. And yet, I totally agree with the sentiment
as voiced by my colleague all those years ago, that the recording and
interpretation of our history should not come for free. We should not be relying on the avocational sector
to shoulder the responsibility of this; we as the professionals should be
supporting volunteers to better understand and engage with heritage, while
learning ourselves from their experience and enthusiasm.
I fell early, and
largely accidentally, into working within community archaeology (before it was
even called ‘community archaeology’ I believe!). While I love to discuss (rant about) the
wider issues within our sector – values and significance, protection and
legislation, pay and job security – I’ll admit to having very little truck with
academic navel gazing around the definitions of engagement, and actually with archaeological
theory in general. Maybe it’s because
I’m a ‘get out and get on with it’ kind of person? I love talking about archaeology with anyone
who’d like to talk about it, and I love being on site, with anyone who’d like
to come along. Let’s face it: I’d be
there anyway, most likely muttering to myself.
I guess that makes me a walking personification of the recent study by
the Heritage Lottery Fund [1] which
proclaims that ‘heritage makes you happy’; I strongly believe this as it certainly
makes me happy, and I know it makes lots of other people happy too.
As far as
‘engagement’ goes there are so many different levels to people’s experience of
the past but in trying to dissect and over-analyse this, we may run the risk of
disassociating ourselves from the very people we are trying to reach. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting an
uncritical approach and a lack of reflection, but maybe we should always try to
hold in sight how history makes us FEEL, and listen to others when they tell us
the same thing.
So, after all that, what DOES history / heritage mean to
me? It’s my job but it’s somehow more
than that too – it’s a passion, and something that can be shared. I’m very glad I’m able to share my obsession
with other people, and also glad it’s my job – I’d make a very clumsy waitress
these days.
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