Erica Walther
Current position
Business Development Director and Sea Country Manager, Extent Heritage.
Where did you study?
I completed a Bachelor of Archaeology (Honours) at La Trobe University at the end of 2007 and am currently completing a part-time MBA through the Australian Institute of Management.
How did you become interested in archaeology?
I actually fell into archaeology at uni by accident. At school I really enjoyed geography, history and biology, and I had some fantastic teachers who encouraged those interests. When I finished Year 12, archaeology seemed to combine a lot of the things I enjoyed, even though my family was never completely convinced I would end up working in the field long term. I was also interested in studying other areas like aquaculture and sustainable farming, so it was very much a case of looking at the subjects I enjoyed and seeing where my results and interests could take me and just starting.
What archaeological projects are you working on at the moment?
I currently lead Extent Heritage’s national Sea Country unit, which focuses on offshore, coastal and submerged cultural heritage projects. A lot of my work involves major infrastructure and renewable energy projects, including submerged palaeolandscape assessment and understanding archaeological potential in environments that are now underwater. We look at bathymetry and cores as well as the cultural and ecological values of Country. I also continue to work across broader Aboriginal cultural heritage projects and strategic heritage advisory work, as well as providing expert witness.
Tell us about one of your most interesting archaeological discoveries
Archaeology has a habit of ensuring the exciting artefact is discovered almost immediately after I leave site, which has become something of a running joke over my career. As my role has become more senior, I now rely more on teams of specialists and technical experts to help pull the pieces together, but understanding the broader story that emerges from a landscape or site is the part I still find most interesting.
That said, archaeology has taken me to some incredible places and introduced me to amazing people. I have been fortunate to work on Country with many Traditional Owners and to contribute to the recording of shell middens, rock art sites, stone artefact scatters, scarred trees and ancestral remains. I have never really felt like I have “discovered” anything. Being involved at the forefront of commercial submerged cultural heritage work in Australia has been incredibly rewarding though and remains a very exciting space to work in!
Tell us about a funny / disastrous / amazing experience that you have had while doing archaeology
Archaeology has an incredible ability to swing from "serious and science" to complete chaos very quickly. One of the more memorable moments involved returning to a field vehicle to discover that a group of cows had licked it so enthusiastically that one managed to cut its tongue, leaving the entire car covered in bloody cow saliva. There also always seems to be a “secret bull” in the paddock that someone seems to have forgotten to tell us about.
I have also been chased by a very amorous donkey, electrocuted by fences that somehow spared everyone else in the group, and worked in everything from extreme heat to horizontal rain, impenetrable fog, dense scrub and impossible slopes.
Some of the best experiences, though, have been working on Country with Traditional Owners in Far North Queensland, including travelling to work by boat past crocodiles, walking through fire-burning country under the direction of Elders, and catching fish and cooking oysters over the fire with a billy during lunch breaks. Still ended up walking through green ant nests and having to strip down to my underwear in the bush trying to get the bitey ants off, so archaeology tends to keep you humble.
What’s your favourite part of being an archaeologist?
The people and being on Country are honestly probably my favourite part of archaeology. I have been ridiculously lucky to work with Traditional Owners all over the place and to spend time on Country with people who understand landscapes in ways I never will. Some of the best conversations I have ever had have been standing around in the bush, covered in dirt and flies, pointing at landforms and trees and features and trying to piece together how a place works and what happened there over time.
I also love that archaeology completely rewires your brain and ruins you as a normal person. You stop seeing “a paddock” and start seeing effective survey visibility, landform context and archaeological potential. A weird rise in the ground? Exciting. A creek confluence? Incredible. A freshly ploughed field? Suddenly your whole day improves! I can drive around Victoria and point at completely random bits of infrastructure and say things like “I dug a hole under that wind turbine”, “we salvaged under that bridge”, or “there is an extremely complicated story attached to that otherwise unremarkable patch of grass”.
I absolutely love landforms and site formation processes and trying to understand how landscapes shape and reshape themselves over thousands of years. Rivers move, dunes migrate, coastlines disappear and entire landscapes end up underwater. The earth is constantly reorganising everything and archaeologists are sort of running behind it yelling “wait, come back, I was trying to interpret that”. We are operating at a minuscule timeframe compared to the age of the earth, but the massive pressure and change just blows my little mind every day.
I have also been incredibly lucky with the people in this profession. Archaeology and cultural heritage attracts some of the smartest, weirdest, funniest and most genuinely wonderful humans imaginable. The job itself is often chaotic and exhausting and held together largely by optimism, servo coffee and flagging tape, but I genuinely cannot imagine wanting to do anything else.
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