Dr Nick Snashall, 50, is the National Trust’s archaeologist for Stonehenge and Avebury and she tells BARRIE HUDSON her interest in the subject began early

“I was always fascinated by the past,” she said.

“I remember when I was about five or maybe a little bit older, and my grandmother gave me a book token for my birthday. I remember going to WH Smith’s and being allowed to look at the books to see what I wanted.”

Lifted up to see the books on the top shelf, she was entranced by the golden artefacts pictured on the cover of a book about the most famous ancient Egyptian king of all, Tutankhamen.

“It was probably about 1972. In the early 1970s there was a huge Tutankhamen exhibition that travelled the world. It came, I think, to the British Museum. I didn’t see it but I remember it.

“My other clear memory is skipping a day at school to watch them lift the Mary Rose on TV.”

The Mary Rose was a warship which sank north of the Isle of Wight in 1545. Raised in 1982, it yielded our clearest picture yet of Tudor naval technology and tactics.

“I find archaeology fascinating because it’s about people just like you and I but 5,000 years ago or 2,000 years ago or whatever it is. History is a fascinating subject but it’s mainly based around documentary evidence.

“That’s great, and it gives you fascinating details about people’s lives, but because archaeology is about the stuff of life, the bits and pieces and rubbish they leave behind, it’s a very direct way of connecting with people.

“There’s nothing quite like touching something or being right up close to something that somebody else has looked at or crafted and used 5,000 years ago.”

Nick comes from Kent. Her mother was a retail manager and her father a fitter in a factory. Both parents encouraged her to achieve her ambitions.

Thanks to an inspirational teacher whose degree was in archaeology and history, Nick became one of a small number of young people able to sit an O-level in archaeology.

The same teacher encouraged Nick to take part in archaeological digs and she first wielded a trowel at about 16.

Nick planned to study archaeology after leaving school but readily admits: “I didn’t work terribly hard at school – not as hard as you maybe should do. I ended up doing history and religious studies somewhere else.”

Dropping out after two years, Nick did a variety of jobs which included stints in supermarkets and insurance offices, but continued to take part in excavations.

She was in her late 20s when she went to Nottingham University as a mature student to study for the archaeology degree she wanted. An MA followed, and then a PhD for which Nick used artefacts found at ancient sites to determine how the people who used them lived.

After a decade in academia, two years with Ford in business operations management equipped her with project management skills she draws on to this day.

“Then after two years I came to the final realisation that I really had to be working in archaeology, whatever else happened.”

Nick secured a part-time National Trust job at Avebury and another as lifelong learning co-ordinator for the University of Bath in Swindon.

She was given her current post about seven years ago and is perpetually fascinated by the archaeology in and around Avebury and Stonehenge, which are collectively a World Heritage Site.

Some of her most important work involves liaising with university excavation teams, and in an area of such prominence there are plenty of those.

“We get so many because it’s a World Heritage site,” said Nick, “and they use real cutting edge technology.

“You never have time to get bored – I’m constantly having to keep up with learning the latest technologies.”

Avebury is thought to have been a religious site, not least because of the lack of randomly discarded items.

Scientists, Nick among them, believe this indicates that visitors treated the area with reverence and would no more drop things there than modern people would drop litter inside a cathedral.

The significance of Avebury dates back more than 3,500 years before the start of the Christian era and the recent discovery of what may well have been the home of some of the people who shaped its standing stones is a major one.

For Nick, such moments are the highlights of a career she loves. There have been several others, such as the time when a strip of ground near Stonehenge was removed so investigators could see whatever might be exposed.

“There was a whole series of little flecks and strips of stone, and little hammer stones. It was the working place where the builders of Stonehenge had been shaping and chipping the stones that made Stonehenge.

"Then they had dropped them and walked away. That’s the sort of thing that puts a shiver down your spine.

“You can stand there in the landscape and you can almost hear the chipping of stone and the chatter of people working to create this great monument.”