The trowel in one hand and the camera in the other

Growing up in Scotland, Alice Watterson probably didn’t envisage herself working in some of the world’s northernmost settlements. By combining archaeology and visual arts, she has worked with scientists and Indigenous communities in Alaska and Greenland, sharing stories of ancient artefacts and past civilisations through 3D modelling, animation and film, while helping preserve cultural heritage threatened by climate change. As a research specialist at the University of Iceland’s Research Centre in Höfn, Alice recently premiered a short documentary about a little-known farm in south Iceland that was destroyed by a glacial flood more than 150 years ago.

Alice holds a bachelor's in Archaeology and a master's in Archaeological Computing. “During my master’s, I started working with 3D modelling and reconstruction. Archaeology is a very visual field with a long history of creating images and interpreting the past. I really enjoyed that aspect of it," says Alice, who did her PhD at the Glasgow School of Art.

After graduating, Alice worked in communication design at the University of Dundee, focusing on animation, 3D modelling, filmmaking and science communication related to archaeology and cultural heritage.

Drawn to Iceland by the glaciers

Through this work she got to know her partner, now husband, Kieran Baxter. “His background is in animation and then he came into archaeology, whereas I started in archaeology and came into animation, so we met in the middle," she says and smiles.

When Kieran got the opportunity to do a post-doc at the University of Iceland's Research Centre in Höfn in Hornafjörður, where he has been developing new ways to visualise the rapidly changing landscapes of Icelandic glaciers, Alice joined him on his field work. What was supposed to be a few months turned into a year, and the couple eventually decided to move to Iceland. “Once we made the move up here, I managed to bring in a few heritage projects to the research centre in Höfn,” says Alice.

Alice and her husband, Kieran, work together quite a lot. “I was already doing a lot of research in the Arctic, particularly in Alaska, and had begun working in Greenland. For me, being based in Iceland made perfect sense, as it brought me closer to the regions where I was increasingly focusing my work,” she says.

Alice points out that her projects align with the Hornafjörður research centre's focus. “Many of the archaeological projects I work on are affected by climate change. Having researchers and projects elsewhere in the North Atlantic and Arctic helps connect those stories and helps to make them more relevant globally.”

The little-known story of Fell and the glacial flood

Although most of Alice´s work lies farther north, one of her latest projects is more closely connected to glaciers in southern Iceland. Earlier this year, Alice premiered the short documentary “Lífið undir Fellinu” at the Stockfish Film Festival, where she combines her knowledge in archaeology and visual design.

The documentary tells the story of the large farm Fell on Breiðamerkursandur, which was swept away by a glacial flood in 1868. That project came about after a conversation with people working at the Vatnajökull National Park. “Many locals know the story of Fell, but most visitors pass through without realising the dramatic history of the area,” says Alice, underlining that the story of Fell is an interplay between the human and the natural history of the area.

Her husband flooded her beautifully drawn buildings

Alice says the project is a nice example of how she and Kieran have worked together. “We have the glacier visualisation and the heritage visualisation, and then there's this very dramatic story of when the site was flooded.”

Alice did the farm reconstructions for the film. “I spent weeks painstakingly reconstructing and modelling this beautiful building in 3D and then Kieran, with his visual effects and animation background, came along and flooded them,” she says, laughing.

Although Alice has made other documentaries earlier, this was the first time she got to premiere one on a big screen in a cinema. “Doing the project raised a lot more questions for me because it's mentioned in the film that there were other farms on the Breiðamerkursandur as well that were just basically bulldozed by the glacier at some point, so I'd really like to do another project in the future exploring that story,” she says.

The film can be found at the Vatnajökul National Park website.

Rising global temperatures are threatening excavation sites

Alice´s projects are as diverse as they are many, and for the last few years she has worked both as an archaeologist and a film-maker in southern Greenland, an area called Kujataa, where Norsemen lived a thousand years ago as farmers. In her short documentary about the project, GREENLAND RESPONSE, Alice explores this farming heritage “through the lens of archaeology, following an international team of researchers racing to excavate organic remains from Norse sites rapidly degrading due to rising global temperatures,” as she describes it herself.

She worked on this project for the first summer after she moved to Iceland.” Because of my background in archaeology, I'm also useful for fieldwork. It helps me communicate other people's research to the general public,” Alice says, who basically has a trowel in one hand and the camera in the other. “You try not to mix the mud between the equipment,” she says, laughing.

She points out that there has been a long history of excavating Norse sites in Greenland, dating back almost a hundred years. “Back then, archaeologists were finding feathers and leather and things like this, but that’s gone. Some sites were waterlogged or in permafrost, and when they're drying out, they degrade very rapidly. This is very much tied to the effects of climate change in the North, and we are trying to document the remains of the archaeology that's there and the remains of what people had previously dug and how that has changed,” she says about the project.

Mediating artefacts through Digital Museum in Alaska

Alice really seems to like the North. To underline that, since 2017 she has also been working in Alaska with the Nunalleq Archaeology Project, named after the large excavation site Nunalleq, which means "old village" in the local Indigenous Yup’ik language. The site is located close to the Native village of Quinhagak in southwestern Alaska. Excavations began there in 2009 and have yielded extraordinary insights into the people living there over the ages.

The project aims to preserve artefacts threatened by climate change. „Traditional beliefs would say that we shouldn't dig up an ancestral site, but the local Yup’ik community decided to reach out to archaeologists because they saw artefacts beginning to erode out onto the beach and they decided to take action to preserve this heritage for their future generations,” Alice explains.

Alice has been working on the project for almost ten years. She originally joined it to make a school resource for children about the project, but later she led the design of a digital museum for global audiences who want to learn more about the project, The Nunalleq, "Digital Museum": https://nunalleq.org/. Some of the artefacts found during the excavation are also on display in an old preschool building that has been turned into an archaeology and culture centre in the small town of Quinhagak.

“It’s a balancing act between making things accessible for everybody, no matter where they are, but also supporting the local community to have materials for the school and the knowledge within the village so that the museum lasts a long time and is actually sustainable.”

Working with local communities

Working with Indigenous communities in Greenland and Alaska was one of the reasons Alice wanted to work in the Arctic. ”Working with this material that's incredibly well preserved, that's amazing archaeologically. But what's even more amazing is the way that we can work with the local community to tell stories about these objects,” she points out.

Alice further notes that she could see how much the local people were getting out of the archaeology, something she hadn't really experienced before. „Not to say archaeology in Scotland isn’t also incredible, there's a lot of fantastic community projects, but working in Alaska for the first time was like: This is what I want to be doing. I work in visualisation and communication for archaeology and to be able to create images that help people imagine what the past was like and make materials for schools - it just feels like very important work,” she says.

Alice and her colleagues co-curated exhibitions with local residents and organised workshops on traditional skills such as drum- and spear-making and clothing. “The project has been going on since 2009, so there are kids who have grown up with the archaeology project. In 2018, when the museum opened, we held a workshop with the kids where they decided to write a song, a new dance song for the museum opening. So we are using the archaeological material as inspiration.”

In Alice’s opinion, it is important to integrate locals into their work. “We are doing this in a way that makes people feel included so that everybody gets a chance to speak and take charge of the story of their heritage and not just have somebody from the outside come in and make all the interpretation,” says Alice, who is also working on a short documentary about rescue excavations this summer at the Nunalleq site.

Working on “exploding models” of kayaks

Asked why she feels it is important to do science communication, Alice points out that archaeology doesn't have the best track record. “Traditionally, archaeology was kind of a game of outsiders coming in and being very extractive rather than sharing their knowledge. Today, we try really hard to do our work in a more conscious way that's not just extractive and taking information from people or literally helicoptering in and then leaving again. The Alaska project is a really nice example of this because it's been going on so long,“ she says.

Asked about her upcoming projects, Alice says she and her colleagues are seeking more funding to continue various projects, something most scientists know quite well. “I'm actually back up to Greenland next month to work on another project with the Greenland National Museum around kayaks, which are such an iconic cultural pride for Greenland. “We’re looking at different kayak traditions across Greenland, and I’ve been creating ‘exploding models’ that reveal how the boats are constructed,” she says, referring to her visual work with the museum.

“Basically, you can take the skin off the frame and then you can see all the different parts of the kayak. This is one of the fun things about working, particularly in 3D and visualisation. You can think about how you can communicate and interpret objects in a way that just isn't possible with the real object. Generally, museums don't enjoy it if you pull something apart, but we can do this in 3D - making the invisible visible.”

Adventure baby on the way

Another big “project” is in store for Alice and her husband, Kieran, since they are expecting a baby. “Field work was interesting this year, people stopped for lunch when I said it was lunchtime, which was very nice,” Alice says, smiling.

After one final field season in October, Alice plans to spend the winter in Iceland. “This baby has already been to Alaska and Scotland, it's going to go to Copenhagen next week, and it has been to Greenland, bouncing around holding on to the umbilical cord on the boat this summer, so it's been an adventure baby already,” she concludes, looking forward to the coming months.