4th September 2012, 08:55 AM
david.petts Wrote:I think a case could be made for not needing a degree to dig- indeed, lots of people came into archaeology via things like the Manpower Services Commission etc in the past and have made great diggers. The problem comes though if they want to move out of being purely an excavator- doing a decent DBA, doing post-ex, writing project designs needs (or certainly ought to need) a decent level of archaeological background knowledge. Of course, this doesn't necessarily equate to a university degree- but it is probably the best way to get a decent grounding, particularly as the whole world of evening classes etc is more or less dying a death...
The idea of some kind of advanced training dig is a nice one, but I'm still not sure it would work financially- I'll have a ponder about how it might work. One of the problems is that its quite hard to replicate the real conditions of a commercial dig in a training context- would people pay to machine watch in the rain for three days?
D
University degrees are inevitably going to cover a vast amount of ground and lead students in several potential directions. I suspect that too many come out with high expectations of what they are going to do, many immediately giving up on archaeology and getting a 'proper job' once they discover that those expectations are not going to be met (probably like most other students coming out of all but the most vocational of degrees). There seems to be an implicit notion that watching a machine in the rain is somehow not how most people expect their career in archaeology to pan out and is in some way less worthwhile than, say research, but that is probably due to a lack of realistic expectations in part due to universities not really presenting all the information. We can't all be full time researchers, and even then, how many people start a 'career' in research only to discover the funding has disappeared. At least machine watching might led to an actual salary.
In short:
Would trainees/students pay to machine watch? Probably not, but perhaps they should because looked at in the right way there is lots to be learned from doing it.
Why not? Because universities are teaching them that this is a valueless occupation.
Joint training between universities and commercial companies is definitely the way to go, even just a module on commercial archaeology (which I'm sure many course now include) and a field trip to visit a local commercial site would be a start. A few placements with commercial units for those who really want to pursue it further might be one option, and longer-term joint projects would obviously be great. Don't worry about the research aspect of it though, just get them out in the field, in the rain, with an objective based on time, efficiency and not pratting about.