16th March 2011, 04:40 PM
Thank-you all for taking the time in providing your well thought out responses
I'm at a loss what to say now myself, plenty to think about if nothing else, although i kinda suspected things were as dour as some of the information given
There are multiple reasons for wanting to follow the doctoral path.
The main one concerns a desire to apply a lot of the pro's and cons of so much of the post-processual bs i waded thru b4 and focus it on the archaeology of a relatively small micro-region. One of the inspirations for this was a guest-lecture i went to by Dominic Powlesland (sp?) and his work on the Vale of Pickering. An inspiring speaker to say the least. Rather than get trapped by chronologies, he showed how you can get a richer sense of an area by broadening the overall chronology of a place. Blah blah anyway, so thats part of the motivation. And, so far as the theoretical slant goes, a case of underpinning the motivations behind certain human behaviour. My hope would be then to apply such theory to an archaeology of a very distinctive, and relatively small, geographical region, ie: the Black Mountains, and then put its archaeological heritage into context.
Secondly, with summer digs run by Uni's during the summer, my hope was to really focus a whole lot more on the practical skills required. Any niche skill-sets that might improve employability etc. This has been something that has proven difficult in the extreme to acquire while working near enough full-time outside of archaeology. My undergrad and MA were almost worthless in this respect, as archaeology job specifications demand a whole lot more than i can claim to have. I can not give up the work i'm doing yet to dedicate more time to building up my archaeological skills/cv, because if i did i'd be effectively homeless. I work a 6 day week and after 3600 job applications (of all varieties and spheres) and literally only ONE interview, if i gave this job up i'd be left on the rock n roll......so i'm saving all i can in order to achieve some kind of financial buffer IF this PhD plot works out. A very harsh lesson/double-edged sword.
In Wales there is a fair amount of money and wank thrown at "Heritage Interpretation", due in part to the Assembly Govt and the region's industrial heritage, and part of my thesis would be to demonstrate how a prehistory of the Black Mountains could fit in to all this, with one rather obvious but twitchy eye on post-doctoral options.
All your time and help is gratefully appreciated
[ATTACH=CONFIG]819[/ATTACH]
I'm at a loss what to say now myself, plenty to think about if nothing else, although i kinda suspected things were as dour as some of the information given
There are multiple reasons for wanting to follow the doctoral path.
The main one concerns a desire to apply a lot of the pro's and cons of so much of the post-processual bs i waded thru b4 and focus it on the archaeology of a relatively small micro-region. One of the inspirations for this was a guest-lecture i went to by Dominic Powlesland (sp?) and his work on the Vale of Pickering. An inspiring speaker to say the least. Rather than get trapped by chronologies, he showed how you can get a richer sense of an area by broadening the overall chronology of a place. Blah blah anyway, so thats part of the motivation. And, so far as the theoretical slant goes, a case of underpinning the motivations behind certain human behaviour. My hope would be then to apply such theory to an archaeology of a very distinctive, and relatively small, geographical region, ie: the Black Mountains, and then put its archaeological heritage into context.
Secondly, with summer digs run by Uni's during the summer, my hope was to really focus a whole lot more on the practical skills required. Any niche skill-sets that might improve employability etc. This has been something that has proven difficult in the extreme to acquire while working near enough full-time outside of archaeology. My undergrad and MA were almost worthless in this respect, as archaeology job specifications demand a whole lot more than i can claim to have. I can not give up the work i'm doing yet to dedicate more time to building up my archaeological skills/cv, because if i did i'd be effectively homeless. I work a 6 day week and after 3600 job applications (of all varieties and spheres) and literally only ONE interview, if i gave this job up i'd be left on the rock n roll......so i'm saving all i can in order to achieve some kind of financial buffer IF this PhD plot works out. A very harsh lesson/double-edged sword.
In Wales there is a fair amount of money and wank thrown at "Heritage Interpretation", due in part to the Assembly Govt and the region's industrial heritage, and part of my thesis would be to demonstrate how a prehistory of the Black Mountains could fit in to all this, with one rather obvious but twitchy eye on post-doctoral options.
All your time and help is gratefully appreciated
[ATTACH=CONFIG]819[/ATTACH]