Archaeologist Will Bedford spends most of his working day trying to make sense out of mysteries that have been buried for hundreds of years. He talks to Tony Yorke about some of his own \u2018Indiana Jones moments\u2019, and an adventure spanning more than two millennia that has led to a major transformation in his own life.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s not every day a platoon of heavily armed soldiers point their machine guns at you and threaten to rearrange your features unless you provide satisfactory answers to their questions. For archeologist, Will Bedford, that was exactly the scenario that presented itself when he was working in South America, attempting to locate and record the lost villages, towns and cities of the once mighty Mayan civilisation.<\/p>\n
Will was in the thick of a Mexican forest, preparing to feel the exhilaration only felt by those who have unearthed a long-lost treasure. Little did he realise his unbridled joy would abruptly be turned to fear.<\/p>\n
\u2018I was at university in 2002,\u2019 he recalls. \u2018I was 23 years old and I was full of myself. I had gone to Belize and Mexico with my professor and a group of students, and we were going all over the place trying to find evidence of the existence of a major settlement. After a few weeks of getting nowhere, we suddenly found the spot \u2013 and we knew we had struck archeological gold. In the undergrowth we could see the raised platforms of so many big buildings. It was amazing. But it was getting late, and so we had to come back the following day.<\/p>\n
\u2018When we gathered in the morning, we were in high spirits and not really taking anything in, other than our need to find this long-lost city. After a while, I remember turning around and seeing a Mexican soldier standing behind me. He was just watching and pointing his machine gun directly at me. As I looked up, I saw a line of guys in uniforms. They were the rest of his squad. They had surrounded us while we were surveying the site, and at least two of them were also pointing guns directly at us. I froze on the spot.\u2019<\/p>\n
The soldiers, regulars in the Mexican army, were on the lookout for the gangs that regularly plunder archeological sites before academics like Will have a chance to record and recover priceless artifacts.<\/p>\n
\u2018Thankfully, I could speak Spanish, so I quickly explained we had a permit, and everything was legal. The soldier still seemed unsure, and he continued to eye me suspiciously. I was getting nervous, so I opened a packet of cigarettes and started to have a smoke. The guy who was pointing his gun at me suddenly asked if he could have one. When I said he could, it was the signal for all his mates to come down and join in. At that point, we realised they no longer thought we were smugglers. All these years later, I still look back on this moment. It really opened my eyes, as it\u2019s the only time I have ever had a loaded gun pointed at me. Then, I wasn\u2019t afraid. Now I am in my forties, I sometimes wonder how I would now react if it were to ever happen again?\u2019<\/p>\n
The incident, and another about being pursued by \u2018killer bees that chase you for at least three miles\u2019, are just a couple of the many stories Will tells, from a fascinating career that is now entering its third decade.<\/p>\n
\u2018I am based in the UK, and these days a lot of my work is used to support, or challenge, planning applications,\u2019 he says. \u2018That probably doesn\u2019t sound very exciting. But it is. You\u2019d be amazed at just how much archeology exists when you scratch underneath the surface. It\u2019s the job of people like me to help a wide range of organisations understand the consequences of doing certain things.\u2019<\/p>\n
The controversial multi-billion pound HS2 rail project is just one example of a major construction job that is literally digging up the past on a daily basis, unearthing ancient graveyards and architecture as it seeks to connect the north of England with London via a near 150-mile stretch of high-speed railway lines. Will is not directly involved in this particular project, but it\u2019s the sort of job that he and his colleagues are regularly called in to support.<\/p>\n
\u2018I am used as an expert witness in legal proceedings and, away from a courthouse, I will often be asked to conduct an investigation into the consequences of doing something from an archeological perspective, and then compile a report into my findings. I never tell my clients what to do. All I explain to them are the ramifications of certain courses of action. It\u2019s up to them to decide whether my recommendations make the financial and legal considerations worthwhile.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Question the evidence<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Will\u2019s work has helped him to develop his views on a number of things \u2013 including the importance of being what he calls a \u2018free thinker\u2019. He is keen to encourage all of us to take a good look at ourselves. He believes that only by assessing how we behave, and what we know and comprehend about our own lives and the world we live in, will we be become happier and more fulfilled.<\/p>\n
He says: \u2018The first question we should ask ourselves, when someone says there is no evidence for something, is \u201cHow hard have you looked?\u201d If you haven\u2019t tested something, you can\u2019t say it is untrue. Yet I find many scientists make inaccurate and misleading statements when, quite frankly, they ought to know better. And I must confess, this is where I was when I started out.<\/p>\n
\u2018Archeology is a team sport. You have movies like Indiana Jones<\/em>, which I love, that present this great man and explorer as someone who can discern everything. In my experience, this a myth. It\u2019s not true. The discipline of archeology is like volleyball, not golf! If I have a bit of pottery, I can easily tell you it is quite old. I may even be able to identify it as possibly Roman or from the Iron Age. That\u2019s as good as it will get. While interesting on one level, this information is utterly useless if you need to develop a greater understanding of the artifact and the period it is from.<\/p>\n \u2018Take the same ceramic to a pottery specialist and you will get a very different story. They will be able to tell you it is second century Roman, or from Gaul. They will tell you how it was made, what materials were used, who used it, and where in the world it may have been exported to. On top of this, there will be a whole load of other stuff that most people won\u2019t be able to understand. But the right person will.<\/p>\n \u2018My point is everyone contributes. No one individual can give you the whole story. But a team can, particularly when you remain open-minded. And when that happens, the value to you, and potentially many others, is priceless.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yearning for more<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Will\u2019s loving parents were missionaries. His mother is Argentinean; his father was born in the United States. Together, they took the teachings of the Bible to places like Brazil, where Will spent his formative years growing up.<\/p>\n \u2018I had a very unorthodox childhood,\u2019 he says fondly. \u2018The freedom I enjoyed was incredible. I saw and experienced so much. It made a real impression on me.\u2019<\/p>\n One thing Will learned from an early age was to ask questions.<\/p>\n \u2018If I didn\u2019t understand something, my parents encouraged me to speak up and find out about things. And I did\u2026 Aged 10, I was a Christian all the way. It was in my DNA. I believed things quite naturally. Things like God and creation were subjects I didn\u2019t really dispute. My parents believed these things, and that was good enough for me. But when I came back from Brazil, I started to feel differently about things, I began to realise I didn\u2019t see Christianity as something that was giving me any practical wisdom.<\/p>\n \u2018I continued going to church. But I could see it wasn\u2019t influencing my life, and it certainly wasn\u2019t embedded in my character. I remember thinking Christianity was just another one of those cultural phenomena that people had come to believe for reasons of their own. Many countries have these religions and they all have similar characteristics. But they didn\u2019t seem to tell me about life, other than people yearn for more.\u2019<\/p>\n When he went to university, the cord that was bonding Will to his faith roots snapped, and for the next 14 years he would drift between agnosticism and atheism.<\/p>\n \u2018I didn\u2019t behave like an atheist campaigner, or anything like that,\u2019 he says. \u2018I just went off and did my own kind of thing. I would think about the suffering and cruelty of the world and I would also focus on the ineptitude of a lot of Christian leaders. This made me think we don\u2019t live in a universe that\u2019s ruled by a benevolent deity.\u2019<\/p>\n Will\u2019s probing mind continued to prod and poke him, posing questions he was unable to answer. After a while of living in what he calls his \u2018wilderness\u2019, and encouraged by his wife, Ellie, and a friend who was to become a Church of England vicar, he was prompted to start thinking about some of life\u2019s big questions once again \u2013 and how faith might help him find some of the answers.<\/p>\n \u2018I didn\u2019t deliberately set out to re-examine Christianity. It just occurred, and a combination of factors made it happen without me being in control. I am a big reader of books, I just can\u2019t put them down when I get interested in a subject. And there was one book that just rocked me back on my heels from the moment I picked it up.\u2019<\/p>\n Will is referring to The kingdom of infinite space: a portrait of your head<\/em>, by author Raymond Tallis.<\/p>\n \u2018I had been seeking some answers to these questions that wouldn\u2019t go away, and I had been seeking some answers to these questions that wouldn\u2019t go away, and I had read A Short History Of Nearly Everything<\/em> by Bill Bryson, that is brilliant, and another by Iain McGilchrist, which was really dense, spanned hundreds of pages, printed in a small font, and was incredible.<\/p>\n \u2018Then I turned to this book that was written by Raymond Tallis, in which he starts talking about why he thinks there isn\u2019t a soul, or anything like that. On every page he makes his case, in support of his central argument. And the more I got into the book, I realised he wasn\u2019t succeeding, and he wasn\u2019t convincing me. At this time, I was on his side. I wanted to be convinced. Yet he couldn\u2019t do so, and it really bugged me.\u2019<\/p>\n In his mid-thirties, Will\u2019s wife, who he says is \u2018blessed with a lot more wisdom\u2019 than he is, started examining her own beliefs.<\/p>\n \u2018Ellie started taking our children to church, and everything started to mushroom from there,\u2019 he recalls. \u2018My friend, who went on to become a minister, would then start poking me, which would lead to some fascinating conversations and arguments. Gradually, I came to realise the evidence about God\u2019s existence had been staring me in the face all my life. I just hadn\u2019t recognised it for what it was.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Science and faith can mix<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Will has been an active churchgoer for the last 10 years, and he believes he and Ellie made the right decision in committing their lives to the faith they now believe in. But surely the decision couldn\u2019t have been easy \u2013 particularly for two scientists who put the \u2018emotional stuff\u2019 to one side and deal purely in facts?<\/p>\n \u2018In the end, it was a lot easier than I believed it ever would be. When you believe in God, you see things differently. There is a clarity you don\u2019t get when both of your feet are firmly camped in the secular world. For me, it was always about the evidence. And once I had started to look into things in a meaningful way, which I didn\u2019t do properly until my mid-thirties, then there was only going to be one outcome.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Archaeologist Will Bedford spends most of his working day trying to make sense out of mysteries that have been buried for hundreds of years. He talks to Tony Yorke about some of his own \u2018Indiana Jones moments\u2019, and an adventure spanning more than two millennia that has led to a major transformation in his own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-content"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6883,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6882\/revisions\/6883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runyourownwebsite.uk\/sorted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}