Why Study Archaeology? Giving Voice to the Silent Majority

St Albans Roman Theatre © Tim Boatswain

It has been a long time since I studied archaeology for my first degree. If I am honest, I only wanted to go to university because my elder brother went. He was the first in the Boatswain family to do so, and I was fiercely competitive with him. I had to go too. I was not particularly suited to archaeology, but after passing my A levels and taking a year out, I looked around for somewhere I could use the Greek and Latin I had studied at school – another accident, linked to illness, but that is a story for another time. However, I did not want to continue with languages alone and study Classics, so I started thinking about Ancient History, which had been a passion of mine ever since I wrote a primary school project on the Odyssey. I know it is not really history, but it certainly felt like it to a nine‑year‑old.

I managed to secure a place at Nottingham University, which, for reasons I still cannot quite explain, I was desperate to attend. I think its lovely campus seduced me (I was horrified to learn the other day the University is in big financial trouble). Then the course at Nottingham on Ancient History was cancelled, and I had to fall back on my second choice: Birmingham University. The course I got a place on was Ancient History and Archaeology, and that was how my encounter with archaeology began. That accidental start turned into a lifelong conviction.

Recently, at a Blue Plaques St Albans reception, I wheeled out my archaeological teaching collection of artefacts from the ancient world for a quiz – the "what, when and where" type. It brought back many memories and connections with places in the ancient world. I have been immensely fortunate in visiting so many wonderful archaeological sites and having been donated a range of ancient objects by generous overseas colleagues. But someone at the quiz asked me, in a friendly way, what the point of students studying archaeology at university was, as the subject was of "little practical value", and archaeology graduates "would inevitably have difficulty in finding employment". It is an old chestnut about the skills a student should learn at university, whatever subject they study, to prepare

them for the world of work, and I will not venture there now. However, the question did get me thinking about what I thought about the subject of archaeology.

At its simplest, I would argue, archaeology gives a voice to the millions of people who lived and died without a written history. It is the detective work of the human story, answering the most profound question we can ask: where did we come from, and how did we get here? History has always been written by the powerful – emperors, generals, the elite – but the vast majority of humanity left no records. Their voices are absent from ancient texts. Archaeology digs them up: the skeletons of peasants, the rubbish heaps of the poor, the toys of forgotten children. It provides a crucial, often corrective, counter‑narrative to official histories, showing us that the past was far more complex, diverse and interesting than the written record alone suggests.

But archaeology is not only about the past. It is a strategic resource for building a sustainable future. The past is a vast, uncontrolled experiment in human adaptation – you can see how I slid from archaeology into studying anthropology and human evolution. By studying how ancient civilisations like the Maya, the Roman Empire or the Ancient Egyptians responded to the climate, political collapse and economic inequality, we gain invaluable data for our own future. Archaeology teaches us what works, what fails catastrophically, and what the long‑term consequences of our choices might be - not that our societies are keen to learn from the past.

Perhaps more significantly, archaeology grounds our identity in place. The physical remains it uncovers – a ruined abbey, a buried ship, a prehistoric tomb – are the tangible anchors of our shared identity. They connect communities to their deep history, fostering a sense of belonging, pride and continuity that is essential for social well‑being. In an era, however, of rapid development and climate change, many of these irreplaceable sites are vanishing forever. The systematic study of archaeology provides the legal and intellectual framework needed to identify, protect and preserve them for future generations.

Finally, we study archaeology because we are a curious species. We want to know where we came from, how civilisation emerged and what it truly means to be human. Archaeology satisfies this deep, innate curiosity in a rigorous, evidence‑based way, transforming idle wonder into meaningful knowledge.

I believe the point of archaeology is not to hoard ancient treasures in a museum, fabulous though they are to engage with. It is to rescue the experience of our entire human journey from oblivion, to correct our most cherished assumptions with inconvenient facts, and to offer us the long perspective we desperately need to navigate the present. It is, as one archaeologist put it, the "science of second chances" – a way to recover what we have lost and learn from those who came before, so that we might navigate our own future a little less blindly. For me, that 'accidental degree' at Birmingham turned out to be one of the most fortunate detours of my life.