4th September 2012, 10:20 AM
Quote:[SIZE=3]Joint training between universities and commercial companies is definitely the way to go, even just a module on[/SIZE][SIZE=3]commercial archaeology (which I'm sure many course now include) and a field trip to visit a local commercial site would be a sta . 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.
[/SIZE]Universities with field units would say this is what they do already. This just a perpetuation of a system that thinks that it could take a bunch of unqualified manpower services placements place them on an archaeological site and easily whittle out somefinely tuned old lags. Everybodies grandma can do it, isn?t jolly old archaeology all about having your own trowel and knee pads. Its also the system where the majority of the students actually don?t see being a compertant field archaeologist as a basic necessity to their degree and nor do the universities.
Quote:[SIZE=3]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[/SIZE]
archaeological backgroundknowledge. 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 thewhole world of evening classes etc is more or less dying a death...
This is the crap view that you can dig without being able to do a decent DBA and probaly even to read one for the site before you do "dig" let alone be compertant to do post ex. This view is the wall followers its the directors copyright, I can dig this site with volunetters and that field archaeologists should be produced through the manpower services doing evening class so that they can compete with the 2000 or more archaeology graduates produced per year ?The only reason that this is a fair fight is that only about 10 of those graduates wanted to do field archaeology and 9 of them think that to do field archaeology their courses in mesopotania and medieval studies is good enough.
We need archaeology to be seen as a forensic science not some lets look at churches and go ohhhoo.
Reason: your past is my past