How should British Archaeology be run

[david.petts]

Is this one saying that at Durham they churn out graduates who on their first day out can set up a commercial firm and undertake field work with the full blessing of the university and their mates in county Hall and you may as well Add all in eh and national trust and all the rest of the self appointed keepers of the keys

Again, not clear what you mean here. Who, do you claim, is saying this? I certainly wasn't! Quite the reverse

[Unitof1]

rather than expecting people to be trained by someone else at no expense to them and delivered on a plate.

I pay my taxes to educate them just like everybody else. And that education involves subsidised university education.

Interesting that suddenly

I *think* you are saying that the purpose of University's should be purely
to provide a technical, vocational training for those working in the commercial
world- ie. this is basically what David Willetts and the Torys (and to be fair
Labour under people like Charles Clarke) argued universities. From that point of
view the point of HE is purely to support business. I'm afraid I disagree quite
profoundly with that perspective - but that is a bigger philosophical arguement.

no its not a bigger question or if you want to put it another way if you are not going to privide a technical vocational training what the hell do you think you are provideing. As you said these posibly 75 possibly relevant jobs going what have you done to the other two thousand qraduates because its those that you are really teaching and who are not ever likely to compete with you.

That Nick clegg I think did a bit of archaeology skirting

For a start, there is the rather quaint old fashioned idea that learning about the past (or indeed any aspect of science or the humanities) is inherently of value

thats not a start its a bloody miserable up its self excuse .

I think you paint a pretty bleak image of what a university should be - a
machine for training commercial fieldarchaeologist- but one that is depressingy
well in tune with the current administration and its agenda for Higher
Education.

Hay come round my way and I can show you hundreds of grovalling cvs set to me a one man cowboy out fit asking to be my pet. Thats because its harsh out there and that what harsh means. Reduced to sending me CVs.

Finally, as Wax pointed out- University field units are definitely not
subsidised- quite the opposite

In my world we have accounts, want to show me some from the wonderful fantisy university field unit.

On a practical note, if archaeology courses were meant to provide purely
vocational skills and feed people into the archaelogical jobs market, then we'd
need one perhaps two maximum, archaeology departments in the whole UK - (proving
c. 75-100 new employees each year).

On the practicle side that means that about ninty percent of the university so called archaeology courses should close down and those left have an incredibly big finger to pull out of where they have enjoyed putting it for the last 20 years

Your fired

[david.petts]

rather than expecting people to be trained by someone else at no expense to them and delivered on a plate.

I pay my taxes to educate them just like everybody else. And that education involves subsidised university education.

Interesting that suddenly


no its not a bigger question or if you want to put it another way if you are not going to privide a technical vocational training what the hell do you think you are provideing. As you said these posibly 75 possibly relevant jobs going what have you done to the other two thousand qraduates because its those that you are really teaching and who are not ever likely to compete with you.

That Nick clegg I think did a bit of archaeology skirting



thats not a start its a bloody miserable up its self excuse .

In my world we have accounts, want to show me some from the wonderful fantisy university field unit.


On the practicle side that means that about ninty percent of the university so called archaeology courses should close down and those left have an incredibly big finger to pull out of where they have enjoyed putting it for the last 20 years

Your fired

Fair enough, you think that universities should follow an instrumentalist agenda purely providing technical training- yes, you do pay your taxes and you clearly have an understandable interest in seeing some level of training- the question is, is it the role of a university undergraduate degree course to produced ready-to-roll field technicians - I'd argue not- I don't think that general education in humanities is an 'up itself' excuse, I think it is a pretty key issue. At the end of the day what is the point in doing archaeology if it is not for the wider public; the reason why we even have an archaeological planning system (disfunctional though it may be) is because at the end of the day the public (however they may be defined) think that archaeology is something of value and something worth recording and protecting. On the basis of this it is worth providing archaeological education for more than just a small cadre of commercial field archaeologists. If we purely do archaeology to meet the basic demands of the planning process with no thought of the wider public then what is the point? Presumably, even you must been excited, exhilirated even by archaeology, or why would you do it? Why would you persevere through all the financial challenges and institutional issues, if you didn't have at the end of the day, a basic love of the subject.

I'm not denying for one moment that archaeological training needs improvement, but the question is whether the role of the university is to provide it. There are other ways, training schemes, apprenticeships, placements, post-graduate training that may well be far more effective in providing more tailored on the job training. I also agree that there are ways universities could improve field training- professional placements, gap years etc, but they are not easy to set up, particularly at the moment.

From my perspective one of the key things that people need to become good excavators is experience- lots of time (months) on site, with a good supervisor. I don't think universities are in necessarily the best place to acquire this kind of time and dedication on time. I'm not sure they ever have- has there ever been a time when universities provided this kind of training? Can anyone, even the old contemptibles, hand on heart say they emerged from HE onto a site knowing all they needed to know and not requiring any kind of training?

So UO1, in the spirit of constructive dialogue, what is your recipe for effective field training? In an ideal world, how would a course be structured- how would arrange a 3-year course to provide the kind of training you think is necessary? Indeed, what training do you see as most important? What skills do you think a new archaeology graduate should have, and how should they acquire them. I am genuinely interested, you clearly have extensive experience in the commercial field, where do you see the challenges and how can they be addressed?

cheers
David

(NB: yes I'm sure Nick Clegg did do some archaeology, but i can easily show you politicians of all hues and non-party activists who did archaeology, that's not really the point though is it?).

[monty]

Nine times out of ten fresh graduates are less than useless on commercial jobs..............and there is rarely any time/funds allocated for training....wtf will happen when all us old hands descend into decrepitude and retirement ??????????
.............

[david.petts]

Nine times out of ten fresh graduates are less than useless on commercial jobs..............and there is rarely any time/funds allocated for training....wtf will happen when all us old hands descend into decrepitude and retirement ??????????
.............

I'm intrigued as to what used to happen? How did the old hands learn? I graduated 20 years ago from a university with a relatively high requirement for field work but I was like a headless chicken when I first started with a commercial unit, presumably this was true for anyone under 40 (and quite a few over that age). Like most people I picked it up as I went, with the help of supportive supervisors and asking other diggers. Was there ever a time when a UG degree genuinely prepared people to dig? (genuine question).

I suspect that in the past the vast majority of training was on a fairly ad hoc basis. Not ideal, but it has produced the older skilled field archaeologists we have today.

cheers
David

[kevin wooldridge]

I'm intrigued as to what used to happen? How did the old hands learn?

My experience (32 years in the field now...) was that brand new starters (totally inexperienced) were placed with slightly more experienced folk until such point as they could demonstrate competence at whatever task they had been assigned. These would clearly be fairly mundane tasks but inevitably would release the slightly more experienced person to get on with a task further up the chain of command.....That sounds eminently sensible and straightforward, but there were a couple of subtle and useful variations.....very senior members of the hierarchy finding themselves with a spare hour, afternoon or day would often come and work at 'grunt' level doing the more mundane tasks. This would allow 1) communication between the lowest and the highest and 2) a chance for 'managers' to evaluate the less experienced staff. Secondly, whilst folk fresh to archaeology might lack some necessary fieldwork skills, it didn't mean they were totally unskilled. I can remember a number of people being plucked from the ranks of us 'newbies' and given illustration jobs, because someone had bothered to ask them if they were able to draw....I also remember one more elderly newbie happening to be a trained surveyor in a previous career and his talents used, another person being very skilled at data entry (in the days when data entry meant more than just click and shift)...I think the lesson was that amongst a team there might be a multitude of talents that could be used when required but there should also be a base level of experience and expertise that everyone was expected to gain and use, with even the more senior members of the team reverting to digger as and when required.

I think the last point is the one that the majority of digging teams have done away with - where promotion to the 'gods' doesn't necessitate still practising the essential skills of the job - and probably the one as a profession we most miss...I'd call upon those with more complete memories than mine to recall the date that archaeological management stopped joining in with the physical side of the job....my memory is that that it was sometime about 1989 when I first realised there was a whole new clique of archaeologists whose souls were black as soot, but never got their hands dirty........

[Unitof1]

in the spirit of constructive dialogue, what is your recipe for effective field training? In an ideal world, how would a course be structured- how would arrange a 3-year course to provide the kind of training you think is necessary? Indeed, what training do you see as most important? What skills do you think a new archaeology graduate should have, and how should they acquire them. I am genuinely interested, you clearly have extensive experience in the commercial field, where do you see the challenges and how can they be addressed?

You will not like the answer on the grounds that this is probably where you came from.

Take archaeology out of the humanities. Dont let the twats in in the first place. Its the humanity twats that are the bread and butter jokes of archaeology. What A levels do you accept for your courses. The closest that I would accept is geography and only then because I would be interested in their interest in physical geology.

After we have got rid of the humanities we can then start pointing out a lot of the archaeology BSc courses are not.

[david.petts]

You will not like the answer on the grounds that this is probably where you came from.

Take archaeology out of the humanities. Dont let the twats in in the first place. Its the humanity twats that are the bread and butter jokes of archaeology. What A levels do you accept for your courses. The closest that I would accept is geography and only then because I would be interested in their interest in physical geology.

After we have got rid of the humanities we can then start pointing out a lot of the archaeology BSc courses are not.

OK- fair enough- but why? In your experience are people with Science A levels better diggers than those with humanities A levels? Does doing a humanities A level preclude someone from having a technical aptitude in digging? Does someone with an A level in say Biology make a better small finds specialist than someone with an A level in French? Is someone with an A level in Geology going to be able to be able to carry out a better Desk Based Assessment than someone with an A level history?

My next question then is ''who does the training?" -we've already established that you don't believe in University field units- so that means the training won't be provided by people who have regular on the job experience of commercial archaeology? So who does do it?

I'm also curious as to how you see research fitting in.. You've made it very clear that the low margins in commercial archaeology are a real problem- so presumably there is very little time for serious research to be carried out in that context. Is there room in your vision of the university for researchers - if so, what is their purpose, do they teach this material to the undergraduates? How does knowledge move forward?

ps: loving your whole Morrisey of BAJR schtick

[Unitof1]

I hate all forms of music

Answers to all first paragraph Yes particularly if they have not been anywhere near humanity teachers.

When you say OK fair enough you seem to understand what's I mean but then you don't take it any further. Go look at your field unit most of them are even more humanities than your average loathsome sentimentalist.

I don't see the problem with research or are you thinking that all reasearch should have some reference to falcual or any others who's names I won't spell for you. the room in the universities should be in proportion to the graduates produced and all the rest of the system.

How does knowledge move forward. preservation in situ.

[Unitof1]

Just out of perverse interest would you employ your students in your wonderous unit?

Or rather how many jobs a year have you got?

Or what do you think that you teacher them that makes me want to make them my pet?

The truth is that all you humanity teachers arnt capable or even qualified enough to teach a single science A level on what grounds do you think that you should be let loose anywhere near a BSc student.

Go drink some hemlock.