14th May 2009, 04:31 PM
I started it, I guess I'd better keep commenting on it.. 
Obviously the comparison isn't going to be 1:1, it just popped into my head from Hosty's mentioning of relative job prospects. I do still think it's a valid comparison for questioning how and whether we want the discipline as a whole to evolve. What I'm certainly NOT doing is saying 'This is the way we should be doing things'!
I've been wondering whether some other form of pre-qualification for work as a digger would be preferable to the current situation. Specifically, racking up three years+ of university-grade debt is not ideal given the low salaries a starting digger can expect to earn. (Heck, even given the salaries a PO can expect to earn, but the whole salary thing has been rehearsed enough) Being one of, if not the, lowest-paid graduate profession is NOT a badge of honour, IMO. So for people who are keen on archaeology and want to dig, would a quicker, more focused, and less expensive qualification be preferable?
I take on board the argument that interpretation has to take place at the trowel's edge, however there's nothing to say that a quicker more vocationally-oriented training wouldn't be able to teach those interpretive aspects. Put another way, you need to be thinking about your contexts, stratigraphy, the structure of the site as a whole, and the ultimate research goals of the excavation while you're troweling, but you don't necessarily need to be fully conversant with the articulation of Marxist and culture-historical archaeology to dig a feature properly.
The downsides I foresee off the top of my head would be possibly even greater separation between diggers and managers, the pure diggers still might not get paid what their technical skills merit due to their now being 'less qualified', some university departments might close down from a drop in enrollment,...anyone else want to chime in?
Obviously the comparison isn't going to be 1:1, it just popped into my head from Hosty's mentioning of relative job prospects. I do still think it's a valid comparison for questioning how and whether we want the discipline as a whole to evolve. What I'm certainly NOT doing is saying 'This is the way we should be doing things'!
I've been wondering whether some other form of pre-qualification for work as a digger would be preferable to the current situation. Specifically, racking up three years+ of university-grade debt is not ideal given the low salaries a starting digger can expect to earn. (Heck, even given the salaries a PO can expect to earn, but the whole salary thing has been rehearsed enough) Being one of, if not the, lowest-paid graduate profession is NOT a badge of honour, IMO. So for people who are keen on archaeology and want to dig, would a quicker, more focused, and less expensive qualification be preferable?
I take on board the argument that interpretation has to take place at the trowel's edge, however there's nothing to say that a quicker more vocationally-oriented training wouldn't be able to teach those interpretive aspects. Put another way, you need to be thinking about your contexts, stratigraphy, the structure of the site as a whole, and the ultimate research goals of the excavation while you're troweling, but you don't necessarily need to be fully conversant with the articulation of Marxist and culture-historical archaeology to dig a feature properly.
The downsides I foresee off the top of my head would be possibly even greater separation between diggers and managers, the pure diggers still might not get paid what their technical skills merit due to their now being 'less qualified', some university departments might close down from a drop in enrollment,...anyone else want to chime in?