Kim Bowes: preference

Transcript context

…Do you hold the shovel? Do you give the orders to the people with the shovels? What is it you do? Yes. I try to hold the pick, my favorite instrument, as much as possible, although I very often don’t get to do that. Our excavation is a lot, I imagine, like going to war or making a movie, any of these activities that involve huge, disparate activities that all have to be choreographed in order for the thing to get pulled off. That means everything from organizing porta-potties to food to working with local landowners and local government to actually swinging the pick myself. My favorite piece is swinging the pick, but very often I have to do all those other things as well. The projects that I do, my favorite part, even more than swinging the pick, is actually getting to work with local farmers and local landowners who are our partners in doing archaeology. It’s their land. They’re the inheritors, if you like, of the Romans who used to live on their land. They are oftentimes our greatest source of information about how that land was used and what they found. They’re fantastic to work with. How much is there still to discover, do you think, practically speaking?…

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