Meet Maiya and Kezia! Joining us this week, they’re our newest addition to the DigVentures team. Together, they’ll be supporting the amazing community of Venturers who make all the archaeology happen!

Kezia is returning to DigVentures having previously teamed up with us at Flag Fen to research her thesis during her MA in Public Archaeology. As our Community Archaeologist, she’ll be doing, well, pretty much everything on the Digital Dig Team. She’ll be testing out our Digital Recording System and making sure every Venturer knows how to use it to upload their finds onto our online database, as well as running community events and writing our excavation report with Brendon.

Meanwhile, Maiya will be the mouthpiece of our project. With an MSc in Skeletal and Dental Bioarchaeology and experience in the commercial archaeology sector, Maiya also spent three years working in marketing and communications in the City. As our Community Manager, she’ll be spreading news, sharing stories and keeping us all bang up to date with what’s going on as well as working with our Venturers to breathe life into our online communities.

Kezia and Maiya will be the friendly face, ears, arms and legs of DigVentures, so we asked a few introductory questions to help you get to know them…

What is the most memorable thing you’ve dug up so far?

Kezi: Probably the most morbid was when we’d been asked to excavate a grave which we were told was medieval. It was an unmarked grave. Turned out we’d been told to dig the wrong one and it was actually from the 1950s!

Maiya: It has to be a Pre-Colombian skeleton that was eroding out of a cliff in the Caribbean. To get it out we had to dig horizontally into the cliff face, perched up a 10m ladder with the sea bashing at our feet, all while having to keep some illegal sand miners at bay!

What are you most looking forward to about joining the DV team?

Kezi: Getting back to working with people who get as excited about archaeology and heritage as me!

Maiya: Writing interesting stuff about interesting things for interesting people!

What got you into archaeology?

Kezi: Indiana Jones! (That’s a joke!)

Maiya: Greed. I was hungry for treasure, adventure and wanted to study something that straddled science and humanities.

What’s your favourite book on archaeology?

Kezi: Anything by Chris Stringer. Homo Britannicus is the one that cemented my decision to study archaeology.

Maiya: One of my favourite recent reads is Palaeofantasy by Marlene Zuk. She challenges the movement that insists we are best adapted to a palaeolithic environment, or that there has ever been one singular diet, environment or model of social organisation that is ‘best’, ‘natural’ or ‘inevitable’ – we can, have and do sustain and organise ourselves in a plethora of different ways.

Fabulous stuff – we’re really looking forward to working with you both (and it looks like we’ve left you just about enough time to pack your bags before site!). See you in the Wattle n Daub!

Have you always wanted to try archaeology? Now is your chance!

Join our team and get digging this summer!