Profile – Jodie Benton – Weekender – 240710
Headline: No bones about it
Kicker: Jodie digs Dubbo
Write off: Jodie Benton has dug her way around the world, unlocking ancient
secrets in the pursuit of her childhood dream of a career in archaeology. But as
LISA MINNER found, this dynamic former Sydneysider is just as at home here in
Dubbo, where she’s turned her passion for ancient history into a thriving business.
Pull Quote: “No-one thought I’d be able to get a job. How do you make a living out
of archaeology?”
Pull Quote: “That whole dialogue between the living and the dead that happens at
the point of burial- why is this person buried like this and why is this person buried
like that? You know - what’s behind it?”
Pull Quote: “I worried that I wouldn’t be able to do what I’d been doing. I had only
lived in Sydney or abroad so rural Australia was really unknown to me. My five year
escape plan term has already come and gone and I’m still here!”
Body:
Most school children, intrigued by the mysteries of Egypt and the Middle East, have
probably at some time entertained the idea of becoming an archaeologist. Sadly, for
most of us, those dreams get lost somewhere between the idea and the occupation.
Not so for Jodie Benton, who turned that dream into a career that is more Indiana
Jones than Jo Average.
The Dubbo resident and archaeologist, wife and mother of two pursued her dream
of becoming a Middle East archaeologist and ultimately built a successful career that
saw her living on the other side of the world, working and studying in her chosen
field of Burial Archaeology.
Jodie was born in the Sydney suburb of Manly on what she describes as a “dark and
stormy night” and had a fairly regular upbringing, spending the bulk of her school
years in the north of the city.
For Jodie, career aspirations leaned toward teaching until her HSC year, when her
interest in history peaked and she began tossing around the idea of studying
archaeology at the University of Sydney.
“Studying archaeology wasn’t something my parents- my dad in particular- was very
keen on me doing because it’s not very vocational. No-one thought I’d be able to get
a job. How do you make a living out of archaeology?” she explains, adding that she
also studied subjects like Ancient History, English and Government and Public
administration so that she could “flip over” to a teaching degree “fairly easily” if
things didn’t work out.
“I stuck with the archaeology, though. I was really hell bent on becoming a Middle
Eastern archaeologist,” she says.
After finishing her three year degree - and not entirely convinced about her chosen
path - Jodie began applying for jobs overseas to help her decide whether to pursue
fourth year honours and a Masters.
“My first year out saw me land a position with the British Museum - which was a
pretty amazing score. I admit to a ‘little bit’ of CV massaging at that point,” she says
with a laugh.
Ending up in the Jordan Valley on a three month dig with the British Museum at a
place called Tell es-Sa’idiyeh, Jodie was amazed by the sheer size of the site.
“It was on the banks of the Jordan river - it was just an amazing site. One of those
true middle eastern ‘tells’ that stand up 40 meters off the landscape and is all just
the remains of human occupation - it was a pretty fantastic teething ground for an
archaeologist,” she enthuses.
Jodie admits to a slightly embarrassing faux-paux when asked by her new colleagues
at the site whether she’d brought along her own trowel.
‘My own trowel? Why? Are we going to build a house?,” she recalls. “I was thinking
of the tool my dad used at home to build a wal l- so it was blown out of the water
that I had no idea what I was doing despite all the experience my CV seemed to
indicate I might have had,” she says, laughing at the memory.
Arriving in the Jordan Valley at the age of 21, Jodie’s colleagues soon realised she
was not your ordinary run-of-the-mill kind, but a bold and brassy young woman who
had traveled by herself from Australia and was keen to get in and have a go.
According to Jodie, a couple of conservative English girls, also working on the site,
decided to take her under their wing and train her.
From there, opportunities to branch out and meet other archaeologists from around
the world presented themselves.
‘Once you’re there in Jordan you get to meet the ex-patriot heritage community, so I
ended up going from that dig to an American dig and from there to a German dig.
That was a beautiful Roman period site on the border of Syria and Jordan, so I was
working on mosaics and mausoleums- that was an amazing site,” she says.
Working at the first site at Tell es-Sa’idiyeh is clearly the experience that most
impacted the shape Jodie’s career and specialty would eventually take. Being a
cemetery site, the experience really sealed for Jodie an interest in human remains
and the way they were treated by ‘the living’.
“That whole dialogue between the living and the dead that happens at the point of
burial- why is this person buried like this and why is this person buried like that? You
know - what’s behind it?” she explains, adding that the emotions the dig stirred in
her resulted in a return to Australia to enrol in fourth year honours, the focus being
‘Human Burial Practices in the Late Bronze Age in the Jordan Valley’.
“So many burial practices came together in that area around 1200 to 1000B.C. - I
was really interested in it. I actually graduated with First Class Honors because I
guess I was really inspired by the subject,” she says modestly.
Jodie was again inspired by a new professor whose area of interest was focused
more around the Arabian Gulf and the United Arab Emirates. Her professor had
recently returned from a dig and informed Jodie that they had ‘clipped’ the corner of
an untouched tomb. He offered Jodie the tomb to study.
‘It’s yours to dig and yours to publish,” he told her.
“Until then I’d really only dealt with exhuming skeletons and cemetery work. This
was a built stone tomb and they’d only nipped the corner of the wall, so I thought you’ve got me and because of that tomb, I ended up doing my Masters and PhD on
the Third Millennium burial practices of the Oman Peninsula around 3000 to 2000
BC,” Jodie says. “It was a really interesting time span - it’s when writing began in
Sumer-Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq,” she explains, her enthusiasm for the
subject still obvious.
Eventually Jodie became an Associate Lecturer and was teaching her own course in
Burial Archaeology at Sydney Uni.
“I was able to take my own teams of students to sites and get them to dig all my
tombs with me,” she says. “We spent four years running teams of students back and
forth and dug three different sites. We collected some really good data.”
At this point Jodie’s life plans took a sharp turn when she discovered she was about
to become a mother. “I was on an island in the Arabian Gulf, feeling really seedy
when it occurred to me that I was pregnant, so that was my last dig overseas for a
while and I didn’t finish my thesis until 2006 when I was living out here in Dubbo.”
Jodie struggled to prioritise her study with the demands of motherhood, marriage
and full time work, but acknowledges that with the birth of eldest daughter, Charlie,
came a desire to relearn archaeology in Australia.
“It felt good really to know I’d left something for later and that was really exciting
because the archaeology in Australia is quite different to that of the Middle East especially Aboriginal archaeology. It’s left such a light foot print on the ground,”
says Jodie, adding that she had to learn to read the landscape in a much more
subtle way, “thinking about landforms and resources and where people might have
lived in the past.”
With a few years of Aboriginal archaeology already under her belt, Jodie, her
husband Ben, and children Charlie and Georgie made the move to Dubbo so Ben
could take a position as Senior Veterinarian at Taronga Western Plain Zoo.
Unimpressed by the thought of leaving Sydney for a town about which Jodie knew
nothing, she made a series of escape plans so she could leave if she didn’t like the
town.
“I worried that I wouldn’t be able to do what I’d been doing. I had only lived in
Sydney or abroad so rural Australia was really unknown to me,” she says of her
introduction to the region. “My five year escape plan term has already come and
gone and I’m still here!” Jodie laughs, feigning shock.
In that time Jodie’s archaeology business, OzArk, has employed five staff and
focuses on environmental and heritage work, with the business covering a huge area
of the state.
Jodie finds people asking “how can be an archaeologist out here?”
“People think of Europe and the Middle East, they don’t think of archaeology in an
Australian context - I don’t just do Aboriginal archaeology. I do European heritage
assessments and archaeological salvage work too. Out here you do a bit of both
types - it’s just more practical.’ she explains.
Now that Jodie’s five year escape plan deadline has come and gone, she’s embraced
life in the bush and thrown herself into community groups like the Friends of the
Western Plains Cultural Centre Committee (WPCC), of which she is the current
President.
Jodie, Ben, co-worker Phil Cameron, Mark Nugent and Addy Watson also entertain
Dubbo occasionally with their eclectic ensemble ‘Mumblepants’.
Jodie plays drums in the band and is looking forward to their next gig which will be
at Zoo Grooves in October, where the band will play support to Aussie rock legends,
Mental as Anything.
Jodie Benton is not your average woman. What she’s managed to squeeze into her
forty something years is more than most of us could dream about. She’s funny and
smart and engaging and if you had that green-streak in you might even be a bit
envious of her fabulous adventures.
Employee Heidi Kolkert summed up her boss: “Jodie is just one of those people who
are completely professional but have a totally relaxed attitude at the same time she’s amazing.”
Ends…./
PHOTO: U:\Dubbo Weekender\20100724\20100720 Profile- Jodie Benton- Lisa
CAPTION: Jodie Benton and a colleague on the Yamble Bridge Excavation in 2004.
(DSCN2689)
CAPTION: Jodie Benton at Terramungamine Reserve, via Dubbo, with examples of
Aboriginal grinding grooves. (DSC0057…etc)
CAPTION: Jodie Benton with artifacts she’s collected from various digs in Australia.
(0032…etc)
PHOTO: DUBBO PHOTO NEWS/LISA MINNER