7th January 2011, 05:09 PM
Happy to chip in with my memories of nearly 5 years working on a variety of MSC schemes in Glasgow in the early 80s, Chiz. The cold, the mud, the flares... I'm not sure that it did much good for the vast majority of unemployed youth and adults who passed through our sites. Very few of them stayed in archaeology. Pay and conditions were poor, the quality of the archaeological work was variable, and access to specialist advice virtually non-existent. And yes, we left behind backlogs. There were some positive aspects - if you could stick working as a supervisor, promotion was rapid - I directed my first site at 21 - and it was a great introduction to public archaeology. The period also saw an expansion of urban archaeology into towns such as Glasgow and Ayr that had never really been explored before. I wouldn't want to go through all that again though...