Essential field skills guidelines

[trowelmonkey]

quote:Originally posted by bob

7, directions for a JCB driver.

I'm sorry but I would not expect a new recruit to know how to bank a JCB, or a 360. Its a specialist job, officially requiring a ticket and should only be done by trained staff. New staff should have an awareness of how to behave around machines, the need to get the drivers attention before walking past, which way they can slew, swing etc. Most supervisors don't know the correct hand signals!

The hand-movements straight from HSE:

http://www.hse.gov.uk/workplacetransport...nksman.htm

I completely agree, only trained staff should bank a JCB. Speaking to drivers I know, a lot of them fear whacking an archy they've never worked with before because of the confused signals we so often send out. (The video is not a replacement for training)

[Unitof1]

get yourself a really thick skin because you will be surrounded by this lot trying to find their way out of a paper bag.

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

Very small rant alert.
One thing that does peeve me off is (occasionally in the past) being told no to promotion as I can't drive,and the PO telling me can't bloody well drive either!!

[trowelfodder]

Although it may not be essential, i do echo mattymoofaces sentimnets in his last post.

I think that if graduates were given a far more realistic idea of commercial archaeology, the contracts and conditions you will experience and the difficulties in finding work then they may not be so disheartened and dissilussioned with the proffession quite as quickly.

To know what is expected of you is very important - and when loads o graduates have only worked on abroad digs in the summer then british archaeology is a real shock to the system, as is the idea that the sort of behaviour you get on a uni dig isnt exceptable onsite.

And H&S is a huge part of this. The majority of graduates will not have any experience of how to act around heavy machinery, and often have little idea how to use certain hand tools(particularly mattocks) safely.

Maybe it would be helpful if there was a construction site health and safety course thrown in as a module since most university towns also have either there own departments that do such courses or an institution that does near by.

[trowelmonkey]

Maybe we're moving out of the archaeology department here and into career services.

Not enough career services (uni and college)offer widely publicised life skills courses; what a contract should look like, how taxes work and what kind of forms you should expect and when to expect them. There should definitely be modules offered on "life strategies for project-based careers(Besides marry rich}, which is a bad idea just because you're sick of being poor and rootless)."

Somethings seem so obvious in hindsight, like keeping a stable "permanent address" regardless of whether you actually visit very often or not to make dealing with banks, insurance, and disclosure (so you can do all the outreach you used to dream of) so much more straightforward.

All the stuff that it's hard to figure out standing in a field, clutching a mobile phone in one hand and a belatedly forwarded letter from the tax office/bank/student loans leg-breakers in the other. B)

If your college/uni offer these things - GO!

Project-based work is very satisfying, but it comes with its own trials. Above all (quick plug for CPD), one has to remember to expicitly state that it is project based to other fields (as necessity deictates side-steps) and stress what you got out of it ("excellent task prioritisation skills, insert example here"), otherwise it just comes across as fecklessness.

[1man1desk]

I don't have much of an issue with most of what has been said on this thread, in terms of identifying some of the main field skills that an archaeologist should have on site.

However, for a lot of the numbered list (wherever it has got to by now), I would be very surprised to find a new graduate actually skilled in more than a very few of these, if any. That comes with field experience, which most of them get precious little of.

What I would expect of a newby is to know that these skills exist, and hopefully to have had a try at quite a few of them, but not to go around thinking that they are actually skilled - or ought to be at that stage. All that would do is deter them from seeking help from those who actually do know what they are doing.

Quite a few of the later items added to the list are more about principles of archaeology, rather than field skills, and I would expect a good understanding of those principles.

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[BAJR Host]

I think you are right... that they don't have to be 'skilled' per ce but understand the need to be ready to a) understand the principals and b) learn about them.. CPD anyone!

"I don't have an archaeological imagination.."
Borekickers

[andy.bicket]

Are we saying that the responsibility of training rests in university degree courses, without formal, on-the-job development by units who later employ graduates? Or more reaslisitcally, that units should rightfully expect graduates to be aware of the process and the skills involved with a basic understanding of field principles but that full training occurs onsite, at the coalface.

It has been said a few times throughout the thread that it is unreasonable for graduates to be skilled in these diverse techniques, and this comes with time, which I agree with. Edinburgh certainly included the vast majority of these items in their undergrad course whether it was Arts or Environmental in the compulsory Archaeological Practice module, but at the time they had a commercial unit attached to the department. Obviously further development was up to the individual.

In real terms it is probably unlikely that all degree courses at all universities would include as full a field skills course as commercial units would ideally like because hardly any graduates go into commercial archaeology and curriculum space is finite. I would be surprised that in one yeargroup if more than 10% (5% in my experience) regularly stayed in commercial work longer than a few months after their degree ends, certainly fewer after a year, decreasing over time. Hopefully someone more informed can clarify this for me.

Obviously time is money in the commercial world, and no one wants to spend a disproportionate amount of time training new employees but it is clearly beneficial and an investment in future projects. But as has also been said many times, the new employees have to be receptive to experience. Most importantly I suspect compassion is lacking in all of this. The competition for short-term contracts on site can lead to horrible back-biting situations usually focussing on relative experience. I've equally seen people with lots of digging time but are prety ropey, and newbies who put everyone else to shame.

Lack of experience does not equal being bad at the job. How often are new people given a chance to develop?

Or is it the number one pathetic excuse why nothing in archaeology changes much..."it's the nature of the job!"

[trowelmonkey]

I think we are asking that:

*Students understand what a site is, how it may have been formed and how one might approach excavating it, otherwise taught archaeology would only be a subset of history. Not, that they would have necessarily experienced many aspects hands on.

*Have had at least a taster of excavation or other practical work. Enough to decide whether they have a hands-on inclination and to become familiar with the idea of a site/lab.

*Have a realistic idea of what kind of job roles exist in archaeology (this is probably our responsibility as much as the universities).


I realise that most students go on to do something else. This is far from a bad thing because most of those students planned on doing something else anyway. I have met legions of interested members of the public who studied archaeology and retain fond memories of long-ago field schools. Archaeology is part of the planning process because of people like that. They are interested and able to articulate that interest to the wider community.

However, back to the main point, it is not fair to educate students and to just leave them high and dry at the end of their studies with little idea of how the next bit works.

I believe that commercial units have a role to play here. Mr Bicket is quite correct, it is costly to take on a large number of trainees at once and a 4 week stint as a volunteer is not really long enough to benefit either party. I have said it on another thread, but I really think that a placement scheme within the degree structure for those students who wish to persue an archaeological career would be the way forward. I think it ought to have a similar set up to student teachers, because it needs to be long enough for the host unit to feel that it is getting something in return (growing competence applied to actual work), sadly, a warm fuzzy feeling isn't enough.

The other reality is that none of us get to pick and choose what we dig. Sometimes it's weeks of truncated furrows and precious little else, so our hands-on learning throughout our career is determined by what we find. There's no getting around that, although I suspect that sometimes people think that I've arranged sites that way just to piss them off. I want to dig treasure too! Believe it or not, I do feel guilty when somebody all new and shiny and bubbling with enthusiasm turns up on site and it's raining horizontally and at best all I can give them is a land drain to check.

[Steven]

quote:Originally posted by i_love_rocks

O.k. this leads on from another thread.

What are the essential field skills that people in commercial archaeology think freshly minted graduates from UK universities should have after a three year course?

Let's try to define the minimum of what you'd expect people to be confident in doing when they first turn up on a commercial site.

The aim is to formulate some kind of national standard for the curriculum that could be put forward to be endorsed and adopted by universities across the country.

Let's hear it!

Hi chaps
Essential field skills for recent graduates eh hmm...

a normal sized ego rather than the inflated kind usually presented,

ability to laugh at inclement weather,

the ability to obtain next job from new employer with a single phone call,

ready supply of crisps/doughnuts/fags depending on site hut colleagues,

ability to run/fuel/tax/insure a car, pay for rented accommodation, go to pub every night and still pay off that pesky student loan on measly amounts of wages,

a liking for ex-army surplus,

Oh most importantly, the idea that its not all "super fun" to people who's daddy isn't collecting them in the car on Friday evening to take them home!
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Steven