How should British Archaeology be run

[barkingdigger]

Given what Potgeek & Kevin etc are suggesting, are we at the true nub of the matter? To wit - should folks even need a degree to go digging? We seem to have followed the society-wide trend of assuming we need uni degrees for everything, because it's "elitist" to suggest otherwise. I agree that a practical fieldschool would be very useful to commercial units that want skilled staff, but it will cost somebody some money. If would-be diggers take such courses, can they dispense with the three-year UG degree that doesn't teach field skills? After all, the current crisis is in part because we've run to the end of career for all those MSC/YTS veterans who were given free dig training by the Gov't to get them off the dole in the 1980s. Most of them had no uni degrees, and the process turned out some crackin' diggers, supervisors, and more lofty types.

Now I'm not saying uni degrees are not worth having, but we need to see that there are two very separate ideas here - getting general theory knowledge about the past and getting practical field skills. Both are valid for certain types of career, but not identical or indeed interchangeable. If the unis want to keep on as they are, then they must accept (and advertise!) that their courses are aimed at researchers rather than field staff, and we need to develop a practical alternative for turning out diggers. Maybe you DON'T need a degree for everything...

[Dinosaur]

Wow, this thread has opened up a bit while I've been off drinking in a field (again) :face-approve:

As has been discussed many times on here, a university degree is totally irrelevent to digging - a very large proportion of the pre-PPG16 digging circuit never had one, or had one in a different subject (hence archaeologists' uncanny ability in the old days to supplement their incomes by winning pub quizzes, we were a collective polymath...), you just tended to get work because you had a reputation as a good digger.

@ David Petts - the Durham BA course back in the early 80s was rubbish, didnt teach me anything useful directly, BUT, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett, if you leave students near enough books for long enough some knowledge is bound to seep across. My main gain from 3 years at Durham (apart from learning to drink) was from making money on the side for various lecturers doing bits of PX, skelly-washing, free afternoons in the conservation lab and the like - all useful real-world skills, plus I now have long-standing contacts with a number of your specialist staff which is handy commercially. My experience from 6 weeks of uni training dig was that, already being an unusually experienced 'trainee' from 'volling' as a teenager on DoE funded excavations was that that just meant I got all the tricky jobs that were beyond the others, no question of them being taught how to do it instead. And there was actually an element of horror from the department that me and a mate were being quite inconvenienced having to keep 3-week windows clear in our otherwise busy getting-paid summer digging schedule in order to go work for free for the Prof for 3 weeks. I'm sure it's much better now ASUD/DUAS/ASDU or whatever they're calling themselves this week are running things.....not sure where this is going but you were asking how it worked more than 20 years ago....state-funded archaeology = loads of opportunities at the bottom end, just look at EH research digs where someone like me from recent experience can't get a place due to all the trainees

[Dinosaur]

Oh yes, can personally vouch for DP as a 'good' academic (despite never as far as I can remember having met the guy), actually bothers finding out about grey lit, unpublished commercial work etc, makes a refreshing change :face-approve::face-approve:

.....all it takes is a phone call or email and we can usually supply info (and I would hope most commercial units would be the same), would be good if much of the rest of archaeological academia took note and stopped publishing out of date and often inaccurate XXXXXXXXXX !

[Potgeek]

Surely theory/knowledge about the past AND skills of excavation are the combined corner tones of what we're about as practicing archaeologists (?). Do we really want a situation where you'd have to choose one or the other, especially at the age of 18 or so. It would be a very sad day for our profession if these things were formally separated. I think setting up a new kind of fieldwork-type school would lead to another tier of separation. I'm sure we'd still get the same situation of professionals saying that the graduates from such schools lacked the 'real-life' experience of doing full-time commercial work anyway - wouldn't we just raise the bar again to justify our positions? That's the point: you always start off inexperienced, whatever degree or certificate you get in archaeology. I guess, if you want to see a profession where proficiency in digging, recording and removing things from the ground is seen as the one and only goal of our engagement, then perhaps this is the future - but it's certainly not one I want a part of.

[kevin wooldridge]

I too would like to distance myself from any suggestion that a university education is a bad thing......university educated polymaths are amongst my closest friends!! I personally am in favour of highly educated folk becoming involved with archaeology....I despair a little however with the notion these days that its only universities that turn out highly educated folk. I agree with Dinosaurs synopsis that once upon a time the education you needed to become an archaeologist could be gained from many different areas and backgrounds......unfortunately these days (especially with the cuts to adult education and extra-mural courses), archaeology is becoming a more difficult subject to access. What would David Petts make of the idea that some aspects of field learning could be provided within the academic millieu, but outside the conventional archaeology curriculum. Birkbeck college of UL used to (may still) provide extra-mural field experience that was accessible to anyone interested, at weekends and evenings running parallel to the main UCL academic year....

[P Prentice]

almost anybody can dig adequately if they are properly supervised and some will make good diggers who can work on complex sites if given suitable opportunity. but being a digger isnt the same as being an archaeologist. a university degree isnt necessary for either but you get the best chance at both with a university degree.

people should not go to university to get a career, they should go to university to get an education. universities should and on the whole do provide a rounded education even if you made the wrong choices in the first place

professional archaeologists should train future professional archaeologists - it is good for business

imho

[Wax]

almost anybody can dig adequately if they are properly supervised

Glad you said "almost anybody" as I have come across some very intelligent people who just cannot see or understand the differences between different fills and deposits. It is very frustrating for them and the person trying to show them but there are some people who just cannot dig same as there some people who cannot spell

[Torrdahl]

Kevin you for that last post I am calling you.....Codger!!!! See you Sat.

[barkingdigger]

Hi all, as I said before, I wasn't saying a degree was a bad thing (got several meself...), just that it WASN'T vocational training for the intellectualised navvying that is commercial fieldwork. Mine were great background, as well as training in research, synthesis, writing, and other useful skills. But if we want it to be a way into commercial field employment then uni degrees will need to include a very large dollop of dedicated site work (6mos min?) and also incorporate the risk that those who can't pass muster in the dirt will get pushed out to non-field career paths. But to do that, we'd need some kind of chartered status in the profession in order to require appropriate training (like plumbers, HGV drivers, plant operators etc) so nobody could reach the job market without having the basic skills and experience attested by a certificate. And regardless of how IFA feels about itself, it isn't a chartering body or even a trade union...

The point is that would-be diggers have to be made aware of the harsh realities of the process, especially at a time of fewer jobs to go around. I certainly didn't learn enough about the dirt during my academic education, and it took a full year of almost continuous post-grad exploitation - sorry, volunteering! - before I was able to secure paid employment in the digging trade. It was rough, and back then we had access to the rump of the old Circuit - large digs funded directly or indirectly from Gov't, often via uni depts. It is the absence of these opportunities that mean we are now debating some kind of vocational training. And back then we didn't even have the albatross of fees to repay...

Sorry, I know this doesn't get us any closer to sorting out a way to get on-the-job training from commercial units. But then I'm not sure there is an answer with our current quasi-required status in the planning system. Anyone for an RICFA?...

[Unitof1]

so this is how you want this problem to go away

First bury your head in the sand that british universities have got away with massivily overproducing something that it calls an archaeologist.

Second after seeing the over supply as not the problem see the problem being field work experience

And then third seeing field work experience as a:

basic technical processes (drawing a section; planning; taking a level) aren't terribly complicated and are pretty easily taught, but I think we can agree that these basic skills are only part of the process of becoming a proficient excavator. So much of being a good digger comes from experience (gained in a range of conditions, types of sites, types of archaeology; types of features etc) - these can only be gained by ample time on site, perhaps a minimum of six months.

Thing is if you have a basic bunch of humanity students the chances are that they droped mathematics and most associated sciences including that bizarre one geography as quikly as they could at age sixteen if not earlier. To the BAs of this world the basic technical process 345 triangle seem like rocket science, do actually require background philosify and are not easily taught if you think that you can do it by wrote and get away with not doing any first principles or that extending the principles is what we should be doing. Thing is most university field schools are run by humanists for humanists who like to imagine that excavation is a form of controled labouring rather than a contemplation and development of the technical process. Quelle what a surprise it comes to them when they discover that without baysian statistics, any mannor of satistics, oh and theres databases and that is quite a compliacted therory isnt it Kev as is any of the other basics of computing and electronic topography, dateing....they are fit only to make the tea and pretend that the solution to their miserable existance is to join a union.

and then fourth thing is preservation in situ. The premis of commercial archaeology and possibly of scheudaling monuments is that we are not capable as yet (havent got good enough technique, money or people) or believe that it would be beneifical to leave to future generations archaeology because they would be better able to excavate these features. This premis surely means that we dont realy see archaeology as something that should be used as a training dig purely for the sake of astheic agenda research which is what most of the humanititis university people do when doing their "training" holidays with a bunch of students where 95% have no intension ever to do any digging.

If we were to excuse a university excavation I believe that it would only be if the intension was to extend the "science" of the subject. As for commercial firms doing the training I would say that they are not good enough full of the humanist excusers.

So to start again if you were to get rid of 90% of the university departments doing archaeology which ones would we have to keep and which ones could sod off to classics, anthroplology, history, english literature, ppe?

ps I see msc people as the lowest form of humanyaist and most of my careea I have fed them pity.