1st December 2008, 02:09 PM
I think you could divide the requirements of a good archaeologist into three groups:
- academic knowledge (periods, names, dates, site types, the principles of stratigraphy, etc etc etc)
- academic skills (how to do research, how to write reports, etc)
- practical skills (how to dig, how to record, how to survey, etc).
A good archaeologist needs quite a bit of all three, although the content of each and the balance between them will vary according to the kind of archaeological work you do.
The easiest way to aquire the first two is through doing an academic degree course. It can be done other ways, but a degree is easiest and quickest, to reach a certain defined level. That is why most people that want to work as archaeologists start by doing a degree.
However, there is a lot to pack in to your 3 years (4 in Scotland), and the more practical work you do the less academic work you will do. Universities are not, in any case, well placed to provide a great deal of practical training that reflects the realities of the workplace, while the majority of their archaeology students don't need that training because they don't intend to be archaeologists.
So, the third component (training in practical skills) is best obtained through on-the-job training in the workplace. That isn't a problem, and is comparable with other professions, as long as you recognise that your new graduate isn't (and shouldn't expect to be) a fully-trained archaeologist.
In my company, we employ dozens of new graduates each year - engineers of all sorts, town planners, ecologists, landscape architects, architects, and numerous others, including an occasional archaeologist. None of them are assumed to be fully trained, even if they come in with a Masters degree as well as their BA, and they all go on a 3-year Graduate Development Programme within the company to enable them to complete their training.
In some professions (architects, for example), the 1st degree has to be followed by a year of practical experience and two further years of study before the individual is considered to be 'trained'. Those who stop after the 1st degree aren't even allowed to call themselves architects.
So, perhaps we should stop expecting the Universities to produce fully trained archaeologists, and instead the profession as a whole should face up to its responsibility to finish the job after graduation.
In relation to Mr Hosty's list - some of it is academic (or partly academic), and I would expect a new graduate to at least understand the principles. Much of it, however, is practical, and in many cases I wouldn't expect University training to do much more than make their students aware of the existence of those skills/tasks and the circumstances in which they are applied.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
- academic knowledge (periods, names, dates, site types, the principles of stratigraphy, etc etc etc)
- academic skills (how to do research, how to write reports, etc)
- practical skills (how to dig, how to record, how to survey, etc).
A good archaeologist needs quite a bit of all three, although the content of each and the balance between them will vary according to the kind of archaeological work you do.
The easiest way to aquire the first two is through doing an academic degree course. It can be done other ways, but a degree is easiest and quickest, to reach a certain defined level. That is why most people that want to work as archaeologists start by doing a degree.
However, there is a lot to pack in to your 3 years (4 in Scotland), and the more practical work you do the less academic work you will do. Universities are not, in any case, well placed to provide a great deal of practical training that reflects the realities of the workplace, while the majority of their archaeology students don't need that training because they don't intend to be archaeologists.
So, the third component (training in practical skills) is best obtained through on-the-job training in the workplace. That isn't a problem, and is comparable with other professions, as long as you recognise that your new graduate isn't (and shouldn't expect to be) a fully-trained archaeologist.
In my company, we employ dozens of new graduates each year - engineers of all sorts, town planners, ecologists, landscape architects, architects, and numerous others, including an occasional archaeologist. None of them are assumed to be fully trained, even if they come in with a Masters degree as well as their BA, and they all go on a 3-year Graduate Development Programme within the company to enable them to complete their training.
In some professions (architects, for example), the 1st degree has to be followed by a year of practical experience and two further years of study before the individual is considered to be 'trained'. Those who stop after the 1st degree aren't even allowed to call themselves architects.
So, perhaps we should stop expecting the Universities to produce fully trained archaeologists, and instead the profession as a whole should face up to its responsibility to finish the job after graduation.
In relation to Mr Hosty's list - some of it is academic (or partly academic), and I would expect a new graduate to at least understand the principles. Much of it, however, is practical, and in many cases I wouldn't expect University training to do much more than make their students aware of the existence of those skills/tasks and the circumstances in which they are applied.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished