7th July 2014, 02:39 PM
P Prentice Wrote: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.
And again I will return to my point that we need to stop seeing diggers as low skilled. They are very highly skilled, it is just their skills are in a different field to those of the report writing 'academic' archaeologist. So to be a Chartered Archaeologist you would need to have the digging skills of an experienced old hand, possess first class person management skills, financial management skills, a knowledge of the workings construction industry, be extensively read across the subject and have superb report writing ability. Well if that is the case they are going to be spread pretty thin across the country - maybe for the largest projects but a Chartered Archaeologist for every small eval and WB?It has been my experience that those with the academic credentials get fast tracked into PO/Consultant/HER positions and are often significantly lacking in the skills that they really need. I would expect that the chartering process would mirror this. Those with an aptitude for writing fluently and eloquently will become chartered and little heed will be paid to the skill that actually matters the most, namely the successful retrieval of information from the site. Maybe this does just reflect my cynacism about the CIfA though.