Kimberley Connor

Current position

Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at Stanford University (https://anthropology.stanford.edu/people/kimberley-connor)

Where did you study?

University of Sydney and Stanford University

How did you become interested in archaeology?

I've always been interested in the past but didn't really consider archaeology as a career path until I was already part way through my undergraduate degree. I had a spare unit to fill and thought this was my chance to do something interesting so took an introductory class in archaeology and that was it, I was hooked!

What archaeological projects are you working on at the moment?

I'm working on my dissertation research which compares food-related artefacts from two nineteenth-century sites: Grosse Ile Quarantine Station in Quebec, Canada, and the Immigration Depot at Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney. I'm trying to understand how the institutions used food to shape the way that immigrants behaved, both on their journeys and after they arrived.

Tell us about one of your most interesting archaeological discoveries.

My first ever dig was a neolithic roundhouse in Scotland, and even though it was summer it was very cold and wet. There wasn't much to find there, mostly bits of charcoal but we were all on the lookout for stone tools. The trench supervisors assured us that we would recognise the flint as soon as we saw it, but days went by without anyone finding anything and we would ask them about every likely looking bit of rock we could find. Sure enough, though, when I picked up the first piece of flint debitage (the waste material left from making tools) it was shiny and beautiful! Not a very exciting artefact for anyone else, but it was very special for me.

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

On a dig in a nineteenth-century village site in China I spent a lot of time washing artefacts with a toothbrush, mostly kilos and kilos of roof tile and brick, so it was very exciting when a glass medicine bottle came along. Imagine my horror when the intact bottle broke into two pieces in my hands! I sheepishly called over my supervisor to admit to what I had done, only to find that it had spontaneously broken into four pieces on the table. Turns out there's something about the glass that's chemically unstable and they tend to just break apart.

What’s your favourite part of being an archaeologist?

I love the personal moments when you feel like you can connect to someone in the past, maybe because a piece of ceramic has a fingerprint on it, or when you are able to link an object to a particular person.

Follow up reading.

You can read more about the food served at Hyde Park Barracks Destitute Asylum at https://blogs.sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/cook/bread-and-dripping-an-institution/ and https://blogs.sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/cook/reconstructing-dinner-in-the-hyde-park-barracks-destitute-asylum/.