Miles Russell graduated from the Institute of Archaeology in 1988 and has spent most of his adult life digging prehistoric and Roman sites. He is the author of 14 books, the latest being Arthur and the Kings of Britain (Amberley 2017) which sets out to resolve the 1500-year-old mystery surrounding the identity of King Arthur.
Miles Russell
I’m an archaeologist
You probably guessed that already. Apart from being my day job, however, it’s also my hobby, passion and life. Uncovering things that haven’t seen the light of day in thousands of years is an experience unlike any other. I thoroughly recommend it.
I usually don’t tell people that I’m an archaeologist
But only because I think that the reality of my everyday life, excavating prehistoric rubbish deposits, rarely lives up to their expectation that I should be battling Nazis in the African desert for control of an important Biblical artefact (thank you Indiana Jones).
Being a specialist in Roman archaeology, everybody assumes I can speak Latin
I can’t. Throw me a Roman inscription (well, pass me one with care so that I don't drop it and break a toe) and I'll make a passable stab at translating it, but that's a completely different ollam piscium.
My favourite novel is ‘The Eagle of the Ninth’ by Rosemary Sutcliffe
Sutcliffe was one of the finest writers of historical fiction and the Eagle of the Ninth is her greatest work. I first read it when I was 10 and couldn’t put it down. Fast-paced and utterly absorbing, the book is everything the recent film adaptation The Eagle is not. Even today I can remember large sections of the text and I suspect it was this book that first made me think about a career in archaeology.
I’m not a fan of the sea
Which is odd considering that I grew up in Brighton and now live in Bournemouth, both popular seaside resorts in the UK. Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite happy standing on the beach and looking at the waves; just don’t expect me to go in there. Personally, I blame Steven Spielberg.
I am a Whovian
An obsessive follower of the TV series Doctor Who. No big surprise to anyone who has ever been in my office (and counted the Who-related toys lying around) or to the (three) people who read my PhD thesis on Neolithic Monumental Architecture (entitled 'Time and Relative Dimensions in Space'). 20 years ago, being a Whovian was a solitary affair; now it's considered ok to have a large poster of Tom Baker over your desk (which I do).
I love industrial music
Anything with distorted synthesisers, loud guitars and someone shouting unintelligible lyrics in a guttural, Eastern European language.
I collect examples of management-speak
I have a love / hate (mostly hate) relationship with the double-speak used in business and politics, such as “downsizing” (sacking the workforce) and “extraordinary rendition” (torture). Verbal camouflage isn’t exclusive to politics, however, for archaeology has supplied terms like “ground intervention” (digging a hole), “limited ground intervention” (digging a small hole), “heritage asset” (something old) and “cultural heritage receptor” (someone who likes old things). Personally, I prefer to call a spade a spade (and not a “steel-bladed soil interface device”).
I dislike meetings
Every so often I have to attend a workplace meeting where, in my experience, people use expressions like “blue-sky thinking”, “pushing the envelope”, “baselining” and “deliverable frameworks” with little or no sense of irony. I’d rather be doing something more useful (like working).
I know nothing about dinosaurs
People sometimes confuse archaeology with palaeontology. Archaeology is the study of humans and human material culture. Because dinosaurs did not, as far as we can tell, live in houses, make things, work in factories, fight wars, go on holiday or worship dinosaur gods, they are of no interest to archaeologists. Sorry.
