As much as I love the academic side of archaeology
and theoretical archaeology,
actually being out in the field and using the techniques
it just makes it a bit more real.
We're here surveying prehistoric rock art from the
late Neolithic to the early Bronze Age,
large rock or stone slabs with really distinctive cup and ring marks on them
and the meaning is unknown to us, so that's why
we're here recording everything.
In class it's mostly theory based so you learn a lot of historical stuff
a lot of things like social theory, interpretation theory
and then here it's more practically based
doing things like drawing, making 3d models,
so you're learning a lot of different skills here.
It gives you this connection to something that feels very very distant.
Yesterday for example we actually uncovered a panel that had
first been recorded almost a hundred years ago
and then it hadn't been seen since,
and before that there was no recording of it so
you kind of feel like you're one of like ten people
that might have seen this thing in thousands of years.
