I have worked with land councils in Oz, and i found the aboriginal community aspect very inspiring and rewarding, and i think that practical archaeology can have a great role as a spring board for creative life enrichments - however i doubt that many (any?) UK commercial units existing at present could pull that off...(as Kel suggests)...i would hope that we can aspire to this though...
for balance, i should point out that Australian context is not by any means perfect...for example the uncomfortable sight of overpaid, vastly under-skilled graduates with clip boards 'supervising' aboriginal excavators doing nearly all the physical work...(in the case I am thinking of 2 of the excavators were of pensionable ages, and I seriously have never yet seen test pits dug as quickly or precisely, or done with such grace and charm...)...on the other hand, occasional land council members really were fully unhinged and very difficult to manage over a long period!
Then there is the bickering and personal issues amongst Consultants/Contractors that always follows a small profession (and even smaller in Australia), especially in 'high-pressure' places like Sydney....I love it
Going a bit off topic:
I did not meet a single aboriginal archaeologist who regularly worked on European sites, though there were many non-aboriginal archs who worked on both 'historic' and 'prehistoric' sites. Of these, some of the best were clearly those with significant field work experience outside of Australia (i.e. working on wider ranges of archaeological remains and using other methods - eg noticeable numbers of 'site managers' who had worked commercially for some time in UK or were UK commercially trained)...
I had a thought; wouldn't it be great to bring aboriginal/land council archaeologists over to the UK (or Europe) so they too could benefit from the intense experience of commercial archaeology over here ... and also learn about European prehistory/pre-modern history (likely to be as enlightening about their own past, as knowledge of 'the aboriginal past' has been inspiring to European conceptions of their own origins) ... valuable cross cultural comparisons etc. etc....
It would be great if aboriginal archaeologists could compete on the same footing as other contract archaeologists, perhaps working on European sites in the under similar terms to the way non-aboriginal contract archs work on aboriginal archaeology....
I think there are real methodological benefits to be gained for Aboriginal Archaeology by close contact and involvement with eg European neolithic excavations -
if anybody has any ideas in this regard, i would (in my limited way) be only too pleased to help
for balance, i should point out that Australian context is not by any means perfect...for example the uncomfortable sight of overpaid, vastly under-skilled graduates with clip boards 'supervising' aboriginal excavators doing nearly all the physical work...(in the case I am thinking of 2 of the excavators were of pensionable ages, and I seriously have never yet seen test pits dug as quickly or precisely, or done with such grace and charm...)...on the other hand, occasional land council members really were fully unhinged and very difficult to manage over a long period!
Then there is the bickering and personal issues amongst Consultants/Contractors that always follows a small profession (and even smaller in Australia), especially in 'high-pressure' places like Sydney....I love it
Going a bit off topic:
I did not meet a single aboriginal archaeologist who regularly worked on European sites, though there were many non-aboriginal archs who worked on both 'historic' and 'prehistoric' sites. Of these, some of the best were clearly those with significant field work experience outside of Australia (i.e. working on wider ranges of archaeological remains and using other methods - eg noticeable numbers of 'site managers' who had worked commercially for some time in UK or were UK commercially trained)...
I had a thought; wouldn't it be great to bring aboriginal/land council archaeologists over to the UK (or Europe) so they too could benefit from the intense experience of commercial archaeology over here ... and also learn about European prehistory/pre-modern history (likely to be as enlightening about their own past, as knowledge of 'the aboriginal past' has been inspiring to European conceptions of their own origins) ... valuable cross cultural comparisons etc. etc....
It would be great if aboriginal archaeologists could compete on the same footing as other contract archaeologists, perhaps working on European sites in the under similar terms to the way non-aboriginal contract archs work on aboriginal archaeology....
I think there are real methodological benefits to be gained for Aboriginal Archaeology by close contact and involvement with eg European neolithic excavations -
if anybody has any ideas in this regard, i would (in my limited way) be only too pleased to help