2nd November 2005, 11:00 PM
which comes back to the question I and others have asked on here: how can we create a more ethnically diverse workforce? I find it difficult to believe that "non-white" diggers exist in droves but they can't get jobs because of prejudice, and indeed, the makeup of archaeology student populations would suggest that they are not there to look for the jobs in the first place.
AS others have said, part of the problem is that you open a textbook or watch a documentary about past periods in Britain, and everyone is white. The trailers for the new Rome drama series didn't appear to show a single non-white face. The archaeological evidence certainly exists for a very diverse population in Britain from a very early period. Just today, for example, a colleague and I found 2 skulls who were very probably from mixed-race or negroid (anatomical term) individuals from a British medieval population. The evidence just doesn't seem to be filtering through to those "in charge" of writing texts and making programmes. We need to inspire kids, and if they are only seeing white faces, it is certainly going to have an effect.
++ i spend my days rummaging around in dead people ++
AS others have said, part of the problem is that you open a textbook or watch a documentary about past periods in Britain, and everyone is white. The trailers for the new Rome drama series didn't appear to show a single non-white face. The archaeological evidence certainly exists for a very diverse population in Britain from a very early period. Just today, for example, a colleague and I found 2 skulls who were very probably from mixed-race or negroid (anatomical term) individuals from a British medieval population. The evidence just doesn't seem to be filtering through to those "in charge" of writing texts and making programmes. We need to inspire kids, and if they are only seeing white faces, it is certainly going to have an effect.
++ i spend my days rummaging around in dead people ++