14th September 2005, 07:20 PM
By and large, newbies are indeed placed alongside us old scrotes in the field but, are expected to get on board very quickly under the same pressures as everyone else. Unless we are talking about some of the more sh*t units out there who actively recruit the clueless en masse, generally speaking, sites are dealt with by extremely competent and multi-skilled people. The activities you referred to are minimum requirements nowadays-gone are the days when idiots with marigolds and knee-pads look to deified supervisory staff with admiring/pleading/labrador eyes when their neurons cease to fire. Joint management of fieldwork is very much "in". By that, I mean that the more dialogue and involvement of all staff on site makes for not only an environment where the finite resource gets a better deal with the time allowed but, provides for an ideal learning arena for newbies. The specialism of field archaeology really has moved on from the circus it used to be.