Leah Hunt
Name
Leah Hunt
Current position
I am currently employed as a Traditional Owner Liaison Officer with GML Heritage Victoria, my role includes historical research, and archaeology.
Where did you study?
I studied at La Trobe University, first receiving a Certificate IV in Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Management in 2013, and then graduating with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Archaeology in 2018.
How did you become interested in archaeology?
I grew up out on site as my mum was often approached for Aboriginal consultation by Archaeologists and would take me with her. The first time she took me out on site she was seven months pregnant and undertook a standard assessment for the overtaking lanes and rest stops along the Dukes Highway between Keith and Tailem Bend in South Australia. The second time I was out on site I was two weeks old.
When I was young, mum would also take me with her to attend Aboriginal Heritage Council meetings in Adelaide. I frequently accompanied her out on site, where she and my nana would teach me about our cultural heritage, the uses for the tools, the meanings of the places we were identifying, the Aboriginal names of plants and animals, and how to track those animals.
The importance of looking after Country and my cultural heritage was instilled into me at a young age, and I very quickly recognised that the cultural heritage industry was steadily growing into one of the ways at the time that Aboriginal people could have a say on how our heritage is managed, interpreted, and respected. I knew that my Country, and my culture, was my inheritance from my Ancestors, one that had been passed down for countless generations who had been tasked with preserving it for the next one to come. People who had passed knowledge down to my nana and mum, who were passing it down to me.
Mum and I worked on numerous projects together, including cultural values, and site clearances, as well as two reburials of ancestral remains, the first when I was eight and the second when I was fifteen.
I began my solo journey into my career when I was seventeen. I had dropped out of high school and began working for my Registered Aboriginal Party, Barengi Gadjin Land Council in Victoria. As I was working for BGLC I was able to start studying the Cert. IV before enrolling into university to undertake my Bachelors. Since then, I have worked in a wide range of Heritage related spaces, including Heritage Victoria, First Peoples — State Relations, and within the Ancestral Remains Unit as a project officer, and now as a consultant with GML Heritage Victoria.
What archaeological projects are you working on at the moment?
I am currently working on a number of Cultural Heritage Management Plans and cultural values recordings.
Tell us about one of your most interesting archaeological discoveries.
During a university excavation, I found a fossilised shell in a bronze age rubbish pit in what would be the floor of a house in Cyprus.
Tell us about a funny / disastrous / amazing experience that you have had while doing archaeology.
I was working on a pipeline as a cultural heritage monitor for BGLC with my uncle who is an elder. The trencher was digging the channel for the pipe to be laid through sandy soil. My uncle, who was in his 70s at the time, had been telling me to be careful when jumping over the trench from one side to the other as the sides were not stable and could collapse. He then jumps over the trench, the sand gives way, and down goes my uncle. I was crying with laughter whilst trying to help him out of the trench and asking him if he was okay. That same day he accidently stood in an ant nest.
What’s your favourite part of being an archaeologist?
My country and its knowledge is my inheritance from my Ancestors. Archaeology is an avenue to continue to preserve and look after my cultural heritage so that my inheritance can be handed down from me to the next generation. I have the opportunity daily to reflect on who I am and who my ancestors are, I am grateful for them, and their continued guidance.