Grace Stephenson-Gordon

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Current position

Archaeologist, heritage advisor, artefact photographer and lithic artefact specialist at Christine Williamson Heritage Consultants.

Where did you study?

La Trobe University

How did you become interested in archaeology?

Unlike most archaeologists I hated history in school. But as a little kid I always wanted to be going on adventures, puzzle solving and going through my mum’s boxes of old things and jewellery. When I was trying to find my path at University, I went to an Ancient Civilisations Archaeology class on a whim. After a few more classes and eventually majoring in Archaeology, I then realized that archaeology fulfilled those childhood desires I had completely forgotten.

What archaeological projects are you working on at the moment?

Working in the industry as an artefact specialist and artefact photographer, I get to work on multiple projects around Victoria at once. I’m currently cataloguing stone artefacts from an assemblage with a date range extending back to the Pleistocene (2.8 million years to 12 thousand years ago) and photographing historical artefacts from sites around Melbourne, VIC.

Tell us about one of your most interesting archaeological discoveries.

My favourite discoveries are when you can see the thought process that goes into creating an artefact. For me my most interesting discovery was a small core and 3-4 flakes which were able to be attached back onto the core. By refitting the flakes, I could tell that the creator of these artefacts was really trying to get whatever little they could out of the core before throwing it away. It reminded me of those moments when you go out of your way to get the very last out of something before throwing it out. Like frantically scribbling a dying pen to get that very final bit of use left.

Tell us about a funny / disastrous / amazing experience that you have had while doing archaeology.

An amazing experience I had was during my very first archaeology trip to Lake Mungo with Nicola Stern. I’ll always remember how exciting it was to be able to go where regular visitors can’t go and see all the archaeology on the lunette. 

We’ve all heard or asked the question “what is there left to find?” When I went on the Lake Mungo lunette, it stuck home for me how much is still out there to learn about our past and how fragile archaeological sites really are.

What’s your favourite part of being an archaeologist?

There are multiple things I love about being an archaeologist. Being able to interact with things that haven’t been touched in thousands of years, but you can still see the human behind its creation. The random places you go and the amazing things you find there. Playing in the dirt to find “treasure”. Always learning something new. But most of all, being able to put together the pieces of the puzzle (in this case the data) to learn about human behaviour and answer the big questions being asked.

Follow up reading.

Christine Williamson Heritage Consultants website and Facebook page.