20th September 2005, 09:43 PM
"Professional" is both a term for someone who gets paid to do a job (but may do it badly) and a term for a required competence or attitude in the workplace. You can do a job in a professional manner without getting paid and you can get paid to do something and do it unprofessionally. To imply that students etc are unprofessional is plain daft.
As far as Mercenary's comments are concerned AFAIK a particular unit did employ a number people in the stated categories for a 2 week dig this summer. It was quite an unusual project (for reasons I am unable to divulge here) and not developer led. Experience levels amongst those staff ranged from a couple of months to several years experience but in addition there was appropriate supervision from very experienced permanent unit staff.
(Would this not be a fairly normal situation in any workplace, with a number of lesser experienced staff as well as a number with more experience, plus those with loads of experience??)
On the dig in question all the 'casual' staff were paid IFA agreed rates (including holiday pay) and were given appropriate contracts with a start and end date. The work was carried out in a professional manner to professional standards. The casual staff employed were happy (and grateful!) to have a couple of weeks work to enhance their experience and CVs for future employment in the archaeology profession. For a circuit digger it may not have been worthwhile to take the 2 week contract, knowing there would not be further work on offer afterwards.
Can it really be considered to be some "sort of sh*t" ??
On the subject of graduates from training excavations - seems like good practice to me to employ such people. They will work to your methods and standards and with personal knowledge of them, you are not just working off words on a CV. If you know they are crap you won't give them the job but if you know they are good you want to have them work for you in the future. You have invested time in them (and they may have invested considerable sums of money in the unit), so make it worthwhile for both parties and give them what might be their first break in 'professional' archaeology !
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everything is rosy and perfect at this unit but let's not look for more demons than there really are!
As far as Mercenary's comments are concerned AFAIK a particular unit did employ a number people in the stated categories for a 2 week dig this summer. It was quite an unusual project (for reasons I am unable to divulge here) and not developer led. Experience levels amongst those staff ranged from a couple of months to several years experience but in addition there was appropriate supervision from very experienced permanent unit staff.
(Would this not be a fairly normal situation in any workplace, with a number of lesser experienced staff as well as a number with more experience, plus those with loads of experience??)
On the dig in question all the 'casual' staff were paid IFA agreed rates (including holiday pay) and were given appropriate contracts with a start and end date. The work was carried out in a professional manner to professional standards. The casual staff employed were happy (and grateful!) to have a couple of weeks work to enhance their experience and CVs for future employment in the archaeology profession. For a circuit digger it may not have been worthwhile to take the 2 week contract, knowing there would not be further work on offer afterwards.
Can it really be considered to be some "sort of sh*t" ??
On the subject of graduates from training excavations - seems like good practice to me to employ such people. They will work to your methods and standards and with personal knowledge of them, you are not just working off words on a CV. If you know they are crap you won't give them the job but if you know they are good you want to have them work for you in the future. You have invested time in them (and they may have invested considerable sums of money in the unit), so make it worthwhile for both parties and give them what might be their first break in 'professional' archaeology !
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everything is rosy and perfect at this unit but let's not look for more demons than there really are!