9th June 2013, 03:51 PM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:These lessons are all well and good, but I think the School has skirted around the essential core question. How educated do you have to be to be an archaeologist? I don't mean necessarily in terms of formal academic qualification, but in terms of all round 'worldly knowledge'....for a profession that essentially deals with cultural interpretation, it seems to me that you must actually have read one or more books all the way through, and to kind of have an understanding of where, what and why humans do certain things in certain ways....some of the 'lessons' and techniques suggested so far could be performed by well trained rabbits...... and that doesn't by default make them archaeologists (or diggers!!)
Trained monkeys are better, badgers the best. Interpretation is indeed a completely different kettle of worms.
There is an argument (that I heard a very long time ago) that a digger should approach a slot with an open mind, free of interpretation and without an idea of what should be. Others have called this 'not digging an idea'.
Those that think they know what a relationship is before digging an intersection, or how many features or recuts exisit in an area before breaking the soil sometimes have a tendency to make up the archaeology to fit the theory.