24th June 2011, 08:57 AM
Odinn Wrote:They also don't see it as their job to prepare students for life in commercial archaeology. Instead they are bent on creating lots of little academics out of those that survive their first degrees and go on to study MAs and PhDs.
But it's not their job to prepare students for a life in commercial archaeology. Their job is to provide classes in archaeology to a suitable standard to allow students to qualify with the relevant degree. What the student does with that degree after graduation in not within the remit of the university, it's entirely down to the individual as to which career path they wish to follow. Some will go into commercial archaeology, some will pursue further study with the aim of becoming an academic, and some (probably the majority) will get jobs entirely outside archaeology.
A course that equipped students purely to work in commercial archaeology would probably be very narrowly-focused, dealing with stratigraphy, dating techniques, finds identification etc, and would probably be largely practical- rather than lecture-based - not necessarily a bad thing, but unlikely to meet the standards required for the award of a degree. It would also probably include a large section dealing with contracts, health-and-safety, the planning system and legal issues. Again, not a bad idea in itself, but unlikely to appeal to anyone who's interested in archaeology but who doesn't want to pursue a career in the commercial sector. I know that the majority of my graduating class studied archaeology because they were interested, but had no intention of doing it as a job, and these people probably wouldn't have taken a more technically-based, commercially-orientated course.
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum