from http://observer.guardian.co.uk/cash/story/0,6903,1111005,00.html
The archaeologist
Mike Pitts, a freelance archaeologist and editor of British
Archaeology magazine, says: 'I have to practise the art of
turning an empty hole in the ground into money - I have to pay
the rent. But what fires me is finding out things no one knew
before and creating new historical narratives. This is inherent in
your training and thinking as an archaeologist, although there is
an element of Indiana Jones in us all.'
Previously a restaurateur, Pitts was drawn to the romance and
discovery of working full-time as an archaeologist. He cites
standing on a strip of fossilised earth beneath the chalk bank at
Avebury in Wiltshire as one of his most exciting finds: 'The
emotional power of this find was standing on land the people
who built Avebury had walked on and knowing that no one had
walked on it since.'
But his most significant find was the site of a previously
uncovered megalith close to the heel stone at Stonehenge. Its
discovery solved the mystery of why the summer solstice sun
doesn't rise over the heel stone, butbetween the heel stone and
where Pitts' stone would have been. 'The story this find
uncovered is priceless - you can't put an empty hole on eBay,'
he says.
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