In many ways I consider my role to be like a detective.
It's like piecing together the past
to tell a story for the future.
I'm Angela Gannon and I'm a Field Investigator
in the archaeology survey team at Historic Environment Scotland.
I project manage and participate in survey projects,
the length and breath of Scotland.
And we deal with things from small scale right through
to large scale projects, from site-based records
right through to big landscape projects.
Well, I had a strange start to my career in archaeology actually because my degree
was, I started off doing languages and business studies.
I didn't enjoy the language side of things and
we didn't really have an opportunity to do archaeology at school
so I stuck with what my teachers advice was and went to university,
did languages and hated it, so transferred to do archaeology afterwards.
I've actually found lots of exciting things throughout my career,
but one of the best for me was actually
working in the National Archives and finding papers
which we didn't know existed, but then being able
to tie it back to field remains, which we'd already planned
as part of our survey work, so being able to match the
two together is a rarity in the line of work that
we have, so that was great.
The most interesting place that I've ever been to
has to be St Kilda.
I've always wanted to go St Kila, ever since I was
a young girl. But to actually go there and be paid
to do it as part of my work was just fantastic.
My name is Ali McCaig and I'm a surveyor
within the archaeology survey team at Historic Environment Scotland.
I got into a career in archaeology after a life-long interest
in history, but I never wanted to be sitting behind a desk
all time time, I wanted to be out and about in the landscape.
So I studied archaeology at the University of Edinburgh
and after that I was an excavator for a while.
Since then, I undertook a year-long traineeship
with Historic Environment Scotland, specialising in
surveying and recording, then undertook my current
post, which I've been in for about five years,
which gets me, as I wanted, out and about
in Scotland's beautiful landscapes.
I think the most interesting location I've worked in
within my job is probably South Uist in the Outer Hebrides.
Pretty remote, we hiked in for three or four hours with all of our kit
and stayed in a mountain bothie, finding iron-age wheel houses
and enclosures and all sorts of remains.
And just being in places that very very few people have been for hundreds of years.
I think for anybody considering a career in archaeology,
I would advise them to go out and do some volunteering.
Go out and visit sites and find out what interests
them the most.
Archaeology is a very broad subject, there are lots
of different specialist roles within heritage.
You might be a good illustrator, you might be a good excavator.
You might have IT skills, all of which are really useful
and really important within the subject.
If you have a passion for the past, then a career in archaeology is for you.
