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Excuses for rejection - Dinosaur - 24th July 2010
I'd concur with that :face-approve:
The point about diggers being no lower than any other variety of archaeological bod is spot on, that's always been the basis of my long-running and well-documented contempt for IFA, they've always treated me like s**t and they shouldn't be upset when it's reciprocated. An awful lot of 'academic' output from MIFAs (who reputedly know better) demonstrates an appalling lack of knowledge of the realities of field archaeology or even bothering to look at site reports and taking an informed reading-between-the-lines, people here are forever raising howls of laughter across the office reading out passages from the latest learned tome to arrive.....diggers just do a different job and have a different skills set, I've had occasion to work on a few 'academic' research excavations and mostly they could really, really do with some training in how to dig and record and how not to jump to on-the-spot unsupportable stupid interpretations (most 'structured deposits' are just a dump of rubbish, no, really!). There was a research excavation in a cemetery on TV a couple of months back and we couldn't believe how poor the standard of excavation of the skellies was, apparently these were palaeopath students, really did raise some questions about what they were being taught and what the police get at the end of it all.....in exchange I'm quite happy never to use phrases like post-processualism in any of my reports.
Sounds like Troll's management have the same approach as mine, mix the old with the new and some of the skills/knowledge you'll never find on any university course hopefully rubs off....on the other hand I may be corrupting an entire batch of innocents to my warped view of the universe......at least they're all turning into b****y good diggers though
Excuses for rejection - GnomeKing - 25th July 2010
Dinosaur Wrote:....at least they're all turning into b****y good diggers though
but are they? is that verifiable?
can they, for example, actually provide a reasoned, rationale and evidenced argument as to why a deposit is structured or not?
or do they 'just know'?
do they appreciate that all behaviour is structured?, and that the structures and formation process of relevance to archaeologists relate to the behaviours that they are trying to document?
or do they draw a simplistic division between 'structured deposits' and 'rubbish'?