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I think GnomeKing raises an interesting point. I'm going to digress a little off-topic, but I remember a couple of years ago having a chat with a cousin of mine who is a well-remunerated management consultant. I was saying how, as an archaeologist, I enjoy my work but not the low pay and job insecurity that goes with it. He pointed out that there are two principal ways to pursue a career- chase the job with the money so that you can do what you like in your spare time, or chase the career that you actually enjoy doing.
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.....what else is there to do ....????????/
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"In the sort time i have observed (just 15 years or so), i think that attitude has dimminished - there is less acceptance of a limited level of materail ambition, rather it is temporary stage. This engenders attitudes of coperate development rather tahn personal development...does this lead to perpetual promotion of people with the wrong attitude? >> ie what confessions might they they make, if persued, about why they were doing thier job in archaeology?"
I disagree that people who don't spend their entire career at the sharp end of fieldwork necessarily have the 'wrong attittude'. I don't seem to remember taking a vow of poverty when I became an archaeologist. If wanting promotion is the wrong attitude, then what is the right attitude? I do remember early in my career looking at the lifestyles of the men (all men) who had been excavators for 25 years plus, and deciding that its not for me.
I got into archaeology for the love of it, and I'm lucky enouugh to be in an interesting job and still loving it. Archaeology is varied and interesting, and there is scope for telling you something about society and the past.
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Thought about this over the week end.
My wife tells the story of following a pipeline in Kent in the sixties and finding a complete intact roman hypocaust system and supported floor sliced through by the machine cut trench.
Does the sense of outrage you or I might feel about this answer the question "Why should I care?"
"No, I haven't found anything yet!"
No, I haven't found anything yet!
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The only outrage I feel is that it would have been nice to have dug it up. I think that it belonged to the landowner and if they did not value it or the possibility that it was there, its none of my business.
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Not sure WHY I care- a few possible factors - being taken out by my dad, a country vet, in the early 1960's to see the end of an era, the last farmer in the area still working his land with Clydesdales, and a fully functional water poweed sawmill on a farm, a boyhood interest in blood and gore which led to military history nd hence to Roman army etc, pocket money job as a teenager working for the man who set up the Biggar Museum Trust and helping to move ehibits in to the extension (hell, these old fashined telephone exchange units were heavy!!)(and riding a delivery bike round the town - Eeeeh, you don't see many of them nowadays). Holiday that took in Hadrian's Wall, Welsh Castles and Arbour Low - and discovering that archaeology was much more iteresting than geology at University, then discovering the incredible ignorance of huge sectors of the public about their archaeology when I was working at Butser d working to cange t evr since.....and so on!
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Leszek Kolakowski (who co-incidentally died last week) wrote "We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are". Personally I think that is equally applicable to archaeology...
With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...
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As a BSc Arch student i do archaeology for several reasons.
1. It's fun.
2. You meet open minded people around the circuit, the vast majority of whom are friendly and don't mind standing you a pint.
3. You can wear odd hats and claim that it is in the job spec.
4. You can stand on street corners after a long day and be reproached by a tramp in a suit for being scabby.
5. My archaeology course has a ratio of 2.5 (ish) women to each man.
6. You can have interesting debates about the ethics of what you are doing, and your viewpoint can change on the evidence.
7. The now annual "how far can you throw a copy of Shanks and Tilley" competition at uni
8.With every action you make you are enhancing the human race's knowledge. Mostly about very similar mid-brown clay contexts.
9. There are no end to innuendos that can be made.
That's more reasons than i originally planned but i got abit in to it. I may go and think of some more.
Got one: the pub is always a good idea.[xx(]
4 inch archaeologist's troll- the next big thing
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God bless you Redben (not a relative I assume!). You're heartfelt optimism, wide-eyed enthusiasm, and good naturedness has reminded me of why I bother too.
Very easy to forget after several years, especially in the current climate. Somewhere deep down the same sentiment is still there in me I hope.
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So, one of the reasons we all still care might well be - other archaeologists?
Personally, having been not in archaeology for a few months, I miss it and I want to get back to it. But that might just be that I'm nuts.... [xx(]
