14th April 2010, 09:06 AM
Hello GnomeKing,
While I agree with most of your comments particularly that standards of recording are in need of improvement, I would strongly argue, and agree with Trowelmonkey, that the finest field archaeologists are those who undertake fieldwork everyday of their lives. Without repeating Trowelmonkey, it purely stands to reason that they have more experience than academics in the field. Infact, in my experience, academic excavators cause themselves a lot of problems simply because they are inexperienced excavators, such as ranging from not writing WSIs and getting into bother with county archaeologists, to finding themselves panicing when sites become more complex, significant and expensive than anticipated. To be further fair on the archaeological workforce, academics tend to use student archaeologists supervised by slightly more experienced students who would not normally have the experience that diggers have in the ‘real world’. Perhaps one should look at the primary records of academic excavations and compare with those in the commercial sector.
On the subject of reporting, both academic and commercial reports will have endured a degree of bias within the interpretations. But any researcher of any worth should recognise that useful data will be found in the stratigraphy report and drawings from where new conclusions can be drawn. This data is by no mean unbiased having been ‘civilised’ by the magic post-ex pen. In which case, researchers need to access the paper site archive which should be housed in the local HER.
While I agree with most of your comments particularly that standards of recording are in need of improvement, I would strongly argue, and agree with Trowelmonkey, that the finest field archaeologists are those who undertake fieldwork everyday of their lives. Without repeating Trowelmonkey, it purely stands to reason that they have more experience than academics in the field. Infact, in my experience, academic excavators cause themselves a lot of problems simply because they are inexperienced excavators, such as ranging from not writing WSIs and getting into bother with county archaeologists, to finding themselves panicing when sites become more complex, significant and expensive than anticipated. To be further fair on the archaeological workforce, academics tend to use student archaeologists supervised by slightly more experienced students who would not normally have the experience that diggers have in the ‘real world’. Perhaps one should look at the primary records of academic excavations and compare with those in the commercial sector.
On the subject of reporting, both academic and commercial reports will have endured a degree of bias within the interpretations. But any researcher of any worth should recognise that useful data will be found in the stratigraphy report and drawings from where new conclusions can be drawn. This data is by no mean unbiased having been ‘civilised’ by the magic post-ex pen. In which case, researchers need to access the paper site archive which should be housed in the local HER.