Steph the Archaeologist

Steph the Archaeologist Historian | PhD Student | Archaeologist
PR/Collaboration
📧 [email protected]
đź“ŤNorth East

04/09/2026

Palmyra is an archaeological site which has impacted my life and career so much so on my short layover in Copenhagen I had to visit to see their exhibition of Palmyrene funerary portraits. It was incredibly moving to see the face and read the names of people who lived almost 2000 years ago. To see grief and pain and love extending across the centuries. We have so little in common with them.. even the way they grieve is different but we can understand their pain. We can empathise. And empathy is perhaps the most important thing we can extend to others
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Thank you to everyone who gave me advice on what to see during my layover as I now desperately want to return to Copenhagen! Also to eat more cardamom buns and explore more of the delights of 7-11 which I had no idea was such a thing in Denmark! Almost on the same level as Japan
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27/08/2026

The past will always own my heart
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Sometimes I wonder if it is worth it to get a PhD in archaeology. Have devoted years of my life to a people whose name we don’t even know. And then I get reminded of how amazing it is to touch the past. To literally hold the only evidence that a person existed in your hand. To be the one who found them again.
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26/08/2026

Have you ever wanted to see your reflection in an ancient mirror?
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There is something almost magical about this. When I visited Tirana I went into the tiny archaeology museum at the university. Most people wouldn’t bother going. It was very old school but had a charm to it and it felt like if and artefacts were going to come to life it would be here. Then I saw my reflection. I’ve seen lots of ancient mirrors. You go to enough museums and eventually you’ll see a Roman mirror. But I’d never seen one cleaned before. And cleaned enough to see my own reflection. An object which once belonged to someone. Which they used everyday. Now hanging in a museum and thousands of years later someone else is looking at their reflection again. All those years empires rising and falling and we are forever connected through a mirror. Not just reflecting us but them as well for eternity…
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24/08/2026

I support women’s right and women’s wrongs!
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22/08/2026

Oh and I left school at 7….to be homeschooled but yeah I don’t even have the Aussie equivalent of A-Levels and because I didn’t finish high-school (because I never started) I was rejected from working at a tutoring company during my Masters
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Comment if you want my reason why!-I didn’t find find the hillfort but I worked out where it was because I wanted to use...
21/08/2026

Comment if you want my reason why!
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I didn’t find find the hillfort but I worked out where it was because I wanted to use my own photos of it in my PhD and not the one which everyone uses! Had to haul myself over the edge and came face to face with a desert fox which was so so cool!
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11/08/2026

Hot take maybe?
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I don’t like the company listened to them because of the precedent. It’s lip service to avoid bad PR. But sites around the world with real protections get destroyed and all the companies get is a slap on the write. That rock shelter with rare first national art in it which was also a sacred site and the mine was explicitly told don’t blow it up and they did anyway because what you gonna do fine them? They probably have a budget explicitly to pay those fines. But Dobby’s grave is a really serious issue not a real humans grave that’s fine to risk. Gotta protect the memorial which is damaging the fragile environment because we cannot have the bad press. It’s being framed a joke but it really serious and a big deal like huge and also impressive on the part of the people who called in I just wish that the same enthusiasm would be expressed for other heritage. Would these same people remove the stones to protect the site so they can continue to see it as it is in the movie? To preserve the physical landscape rather than the memorial as the ritual.
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10/08/2026

Archaeology can tell the stories history never wanted to remember.
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I don’t really have anything to say aside from read the article if you can because it is truly one of the best I’ve ever had. I was in tears reading about how important this work was. If I had the opportunity to visit one day I absolutely would
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Tracing the origins of St Helena’s liberated Africans
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07/08/2026

This summer the Mongol’s have conquered Leeds!
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After going to the opening of, Chinggis Khan: How the Mongols Changed the World, I was super excited to return and see them brought to life at the horse show which is also completely free! The exhibition does such an amazing job of bringing the history of the Mongol Empire to life starting right back in the Bronze Age 1,000’s of years before he was born!
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Sometimes I find that I can look at artefacts in museums and forget they weren’t made for display they were made to be used. The Mongolian-style horse archery was crazy impressive and it gave me a different appreciation for the artefacts because I now knew how they were used. The bow on display, who did it belong to? Did they use it in battle, for hunting or games? Did it save their life? Did it take a life?
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Growing up the Mongol Empire were the terrifying unstoppable hordes who almost conquered the whole of Europe. But the exhibition and horse show equally work together to tell a different story. The story of a people who emerged from a long legacy of steppe cultures, who valued other cultures (even the ones they conquered), who had some of the most powerful woman leaders in history, who were not a mindless hoard of horsemen bent on destroying civilisation but were people just normal people
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