Guardian Archaeology League Table

[1man1desk]

Posted by RedEarth:

quote:If you replace the process of building a building for carrying out an excavation and change 'architect' for 'manager', 'engineer' for 'project officer', and 'builder' for 'site assistant' that is perhaps in some way comparible to archaeology (feel free to point out how it isn't) ... Discuss/pull apart

An architect designs a building (=project), prepares a specification and then oversees its implementation by a contractor, to ensure that it is built as designed. On that basis, a better archaeological parallel for the architect would be a consultant, rather than a manager. Otherwise, I think that your analogy works quite well.

On training, the big differences are as follows:

• an architect must be both academically and professionally qualified in order to practice, where an archaeologist doesn't formally need either;
• to obtain their qualifications, architects need two years of professional training and a year in professional practice after their first degree (note - professional training, not academic training, so it does not equate to archaeological postgraduate degrees);
• an architect with only a first degree can work as an 'architectural technician', but cannot call themselves an architect

Now, I think it is accepted on this forum that one or more degrees in archaeology are useful, but not essential, to work as an archaeologist on excavations or field projects, at any level of responsibility. The majority of people doing such work do have degrees, but there are many very good archaeologists who don't.

However, my own view is that a high level of academic knowledge and understanding is required to analyse, interpret and report on the results of archaeological projects, and a high level of professional expertise is required to adequately design and manage or oversee archaeological projects. The best way to obtain those academic and professional abilities is to study for at least one academic degree and to obtain professional training, and to combine both with a substantial requirement for field experience.

There already is an informal divide in archaeology between career diggers on one hand, and those who want to move into jobs that require the academic and professional skills that I mentioned above. Would it be a good idea to formalise that in a similar way to the architects, with different specified levels of qualificaiton required for each of the two career paths?


1man1desk

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