Autism in archaeology: Harnessing strengths, navigating challenges, and building an inclusive workplace
- DATE WRITTEN:
- READING TIME: 4 minutes
- AUTHORS: Jacky Sommerville (Senior Finds Officer)
I’m Jacky, I’m a Senior Finds Officer and I’ve been at CA for approaching 12 years. I was diagnosed autistic 4.5 years ago, at 52. Since then I have realised that I also have ADHD and may have mild dyscalculia (which affects working with numbers). It’s common for a neurodivergent person to have multiple neurodivergent conditions, for example, it is estimated that at least 50% of autistics also have ADHD.
Autism is a lifelong developmental disability, caused by differences in brain wiring. So we’re born autistic and there is no “treatment”.
Helpful traits
People often think of being autistic as an entirely negative thing, but several of my autistic traits are helpful in my work.
Special interests: This is the official term for an autistic person’s “autistic obsessions”. One of my special interests is flint. As reporting on prehistoric flints is the main part of my work, it means I get to make a living from a subject that really interests me. I’m always keen to learn more about flint and to improve my understanding, which has helped me to progress my career. Archaeology is one of the industries which is particularly attractive to autistic people (more obvious ones include IT and engineering), as nerding out on something specific is actively encouraged!
Hyperfocus: It’s useful to be able to focus intensely on my work, particularly during the research part of my report writing.
Infodumping: This is when an autistic person pours out a load of information on one of their special interests. I LOVE to talk about flints and I get to do this as part of my job, both when training colleagues to recognise prehistoric flints and when giving talks to work experience students who come into the office. I just need to make sure I don’t speak too fast or go into too much detail.
Difficulties
Some of my autistic traits do cause challenges, including at work. Like a lot of autistic people, I have very strong senses and for me indoor lighting is mostly painfully bright, I can’t filter out background noise and I am nauseated by most smells, such as perfume/aftershave, food and flowers.
Luckily for me, CA has been able to accommodate me, by turning a storage cupboard for geomatics equipment into an office for me. I control the lighting, it’s much less noisy than the open plan office and I’m protected from smells.
Sometimes, I do work in a shared space, such as the finds lab when I’m recording finds. I’m often not the only autistic person in the room and it has become normalised not to automatically switch on the overhead lights. If someone else in the room is doing something like sample processing, they can usually work with a desk lamp. It’s useful to consider if “norms” are truly necessary.
If the big light does need to be on I wear a sun visor. I expect people initially think it looks daft to wear it indoors, but they quickly get used to it and I need to look after my own comfort and wellbeing. I also wear a Sunflower Hidden Disability lanyard at work, with an “I am autistic” card on it, so people can see the reason if they are curious.
I don’t have a good memory. It’s typical for autistics to have a very good long-term memory but poor short-term or working memory. If I’m in a meeting, or at a talk or training session, I will take extensive notes. Later I type them up so I can file them and refer back to them. I also prefer project-related communications to be by email, so I can save them in a folder and refer back to them.
