4th July 2014, 06:52 PM
Sikelgaita Wrote:Without a high quality excavation team there is no high quality record with which the report writer can interrogate to produce the report. It has been my long held belief that it is not the quantity of diggers put on a site that is important but the quality of them. It has been my experience that one digger with a natural affinity for digging is worth two or three of those that do not have that innate ability. Surely one experienced digger paid, lets say £22,500 is both cheaper and more productive than two diggers with little experience and limited skills paid at £17,500. Furthermore skilled operatives can work more independently and require less supervision. Why do units not cost jobs and employ diggers on this basis is a question I ask myself constantly. All this requires a much greater recognition of the digger as a technician in their own right, not just the bottom rung in a career ladder that I think is broken and which helps perpetuates the low pay and short term contract problem. Also rather than calling them trainees what about treating them like apprentices similar to those from other trades. The experienced and technically skilled digger can provide on the job training to the apprentice.again i will come back to my point that we need to differenciate between low skill diggers, be they trainess apprentices or old lags, and skilled archaeologists. as far as i can see chartering archaeologists is the best way to achieve this. trainees, apprentices and old lags could all strive to become such given perseverance, training, and technical ability - all demonstrable, measured and assured.
when i rule the world i will make it mandatory for all projects to be populated with a chartered archaeologist / technician / apprentice ratio of 1:1:1 and the minimum pay ratio would currently be £35K £26K: £18K
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers