How should British Archaeology be run

[david.petts]

Considering the mish mash of different organisations that have a finger in this country's archaeology how do the forum members think the archaeological heritage of this country would best be managed, preserved and researched?
...

What is the point of University excavations (vanity projects?)

As someone in academia I thought I pick up on this- from my point of view University excavations have two purposes
(1) Training (cue moans about how University digs don't prepare people for commercial excavation)- of course they don't. In the same way a medical degree doesn't make someone a surgeon- but it does provide students with basic understanding of the excavation process which can be built on. At the end of the day while it would be great to have a degree course that involved 30 weeks digging it is can't be done. Universities are having to provide at undergraduate level a degree that meets the need of the would be excavator, wannabe geophysics specialists, aspirant finds specialists, people who want to be teachers, those who want to do a general humanities degree etc etc - it is a fine balancing job to cover all the bases.

It is worth flagging up that it is getting increasingly difficult to provide the same student training experience that many of use had (ie long away digs during the summer). As more and more students need to work during the vacations, more and more universities are having to do their training digs in term time- as a consequence this means they tend to be run locally with the students staying in their uni accomodation and being bussed in each day.

On a practical note, I'd love to hear how people think University training can be *realistically* improved? What do you wish you'd learnt at University when you started your first commercial job? And perhaps more tendentiously, if Universities won't / can't provide extensive field training, who should? How might it work financially? CPD, training post etc etc?

(2) Research- obvious answer really- but university excavations provide relatively rare opportunities to look at one site over a long period of time and in detail with (relatively) little pressure on time.

cheers
David

[RedEarth]

On a practical note, I'd love to hear how people think University training can be *realistically* improved? What do you wish you'd learnt at University when you started your first commercial job? And perhaps more tendentiously, if Universities won't / can't provide extensive field training, who should? How might it work financially? CPD, training post etc etc?

Make everyone where hard hats, steelies and hi-viz all the time and make them stay out in all weathers. Have massive excavators driving about constantly so they get used to the noise and how to keep out of their way. Get a couple of people to come and moan and complain at them about how much it's costing or slowing things down. Basically take away much of their dignity and willingness to do the job. The ones that are still left after a few weeks will go a long way. Will university budgets stretch to plant hire?

[BAJR]

This is getting more into the issue. (thanks David for that post)

I think the issue comes down to the line:

f Universities won't / can't provide extensive field training, who should?

Like a game of skills tennis. your problem... no your problem... etc...
Could it be 'our problem' a university dig, that is carried out in partnership with commercial archaeology? Thus broken commercials get to remember why they started in the first place... and get to slow down and actually dig archaeology and contribute to research... and conversely, the university dig benefits from having field archaeologists who do it all year round. Who have the skills ( for now) who can pass on the hints, the old lag wrinkles etc...

Is there something wrong with a joint exercise? I do know it happens...

[Wax]

Time was (not so long ago) when many Universities who ran archaeology degrees also had their own field units who undertook commercial projects as well as teaching. So what happened to all of these? Why did universities get rid of the field operations? I cannot say that I have been impressed by the current trend for university archaeology departments to cut themselves free of the field units. I have notice my local universities have cut back a great deal on their archaeology courses. Is this the way things are going to go with students having to pay a considerable sum of money to get a degree universities are focusing on where the money is ie foreign students and degrees that give people a high earning profession at the end of the course. Bye Bye to learning for the sake of learning for any but the financial elitexx(

Still solves the problem of jobs for new graduates in the long run when you do not have any new graduates

[david.petts]

This is getting more into the issue. (thanks David for that post)

I think the issue comes down to the line:

Like a game of skills tennis. your problem... no your problem... etc...
Could it be 'our problem' a university dig, that is carried out in partnership with commercial archaeology? Thus broken commercials get to remember why they started in the first place... and get to slow down and actually dig archaeology and contribute to research... and conversely, the university dig benefits from having field archaeologists who do it all year round. Who have the skills ( for now) who can pass on the hints, the old lag wrinkles etc...

Is there something wrong with a joint exercise? I do know it happens...

I agree, I think whatever the solution is, it is going to have to involve partnership working. Like all these things it comes down to funding in the end. Certainly we in Durham have our own commercial field unit who leads on our field training (I think the set up is similar at Leicester). I certainly think the obvious people to teach field skills are those who use them all the time rather than for a couple of weeks every summer. The inevitable nitty gritty is in the detail- both commercial units and universities are generally running on pretty tight margins- I suspect most universities would find it tricky to pay market rates to contract a commercial unit to come in an do a joint-production. Equally, I don't know how many units are in a position to put in staff for at least three weeks pro bono (particularly as such a project may require a commitment over several years).

There are small pots of money around for some things of this nature (I'm working an application for funding for a post-grad training project for geophysics and earthwork survey bringing in community groups and are field unit for example)- however, in the current funding landscape it is increasingly hard to find funding for 'big digs' - the Silchesters, Stonehenge Riverside Projects etc are somewhat in the minority when it comes to university excavations in the UK. Whilst it might be nice in theory to get students training on lots of smaller projects, we are quite bound up by our internal rules on assessment; we need to ensure all our students get the same field experience and are assessed on the basis of the same experiences (and there is also the basic issue of training consistency - single context recording may be de rigeur in the UK, but colleagues working abroad might be using entirely different methodologies). This means we really need to give our students at least one big dig as their key training event


I'll respon to Wax's comment when I've done my next pile of marking!

D

[Unitof1]

Let's get it out straightaway you are teaching archaeological vanity to the vast majority of students who never intended to have anything what so ever to do with commercial archaeology even though you like to suggest that

Universities are having to provide at undergraduate level a degree that meets the need of the would be excavator, wannabe geophysics specialists, aspirant finds specialists, people who want to be teachers, those who want to do a general humanities degree etc etc - it is a fine balancing job to cover all the bases

For the last 25 years or so virtually all the universities have sucked the prperganda of archaeology dry to churn out a very cheap humanities degree (and I mean that as opposed to a science degree).

To compound this educational rip off, which is basically a rip off of anybody wanting to call themselves a professional archaeologist and particularly one working in the so called commercial world the universities have then been in direct and massively subsidised competition with their graduated through their so call commercial units

Certainly we in Durham have our own commercial field unit who leads on our field training (I think the set up is similar at Leicester). I certainly think the obvious

Yer right you give a monkeys go give them a mark

[Wax]

Just to correct Unitof 1 the commercial field units of universities that I know of we're not subsidisied by the University but were rather horribly constrained by University imposed overheads that they had to pay to the universities that ran them. In consequence many could not compete in the commercial sector as they had to factor the University overheads into their prices.

[Unitof1]

Utter rubbish. Appart from having subsidised facilities, access to academic journals, copyright maps and computers and software there was insurances, educational pensions, the old vat angle. That when these " services" come to be disbanded what you find is that there is not a single legal document giving them any commercial what's the word capital. they are not anything, What do they call the so called unit at Durham. they are vague entities of some department within some faculty related to some school. All bollocks based on the life span of a few personalities.

Is this one saying that at Durham they churn out graduates who on their first day out can set up a commercial firm and undertake field work with the full blessing of the university and their mates in county Hall and you may as well Add all in eh and national trust and all the rest of the self appointed keepers of the keys

[david.petts]

Let's get it out straightaway you are teaching archaeological vanity to the vast majority of students who never intended to have anything what so ever to do with commercial archaeology even though you like to suggest that


For the last 25 years or so virtually all the universities have sucked the prperganda of archaeology dry to churn out a very cheap humanities degree (and I mean that as opposed to a science degree).

To compound this educational rip off, which is basically a rip off of anybody wanting to call themselves a professional archaeologist and particularly one working in the so called commercial world the universities have then been in direct and massively subsidised competition with their graduated through their so call commercial units


Yer right you give a monkeys go give them a mark

Not sure what the point you are making is! I *think* you are saying that the purpose of University's should be purely to provide a technical, vocational training for those working in the commercial world- ie. this is basically what David Willetts and the Torys (and to be fair Labour under people like Charles Clarke) argued universities. From that point of view the point of HE is purely to support business. I'm afraid I disagree quite profoundly with that perspective - but that is a bigger philosophical arguement.

Of course, Universities are meant to be much more than that. For a start, there is the rather quaint old fashioned idea that learning about the past (or indeed any aspect of science or the humanities) is inherently of value. I think it is good that there is a cohort of people out there working in many aspects of life (teachers; business people; god help us, even politicians) who have an positive outlook and interest in the past in general and archaeology in particular. Secondly, this is a truism, but archaeology is a hell of a lot more than excavation- I've already mentioned all the finds specialities, other survey techniques etc - plus, of course, the basic details, like chronology, wider social perspectives (I think we've all read grey literature where great fieldwork has been undermined by the basic ability to synthesize and interpret what it all actually means). However, there is no way an UG degree can provide the training to make sure students are ready to take up any of these vocational roles after three years. Finally, there is the other important aspect of what Universities do, research! A lot of really important research work is done in universities by academics and research students.

I think you paint a pretty bleak image of what a university should be - a machine for training commercial fieldarchaeologist- but one that is depressingy well in tune with the current administration and its agenda for Higher Education.

Finally, as Wax pointed out- University field units are definitely not subsidised- quite the opposite!


On a practical note, if archaeology courses were meant to provide purely vocational skills and feed people into the archaelogical jobs market, then we'd need one perhaps two maximum, archaeology departments in the whole UK - (proving c. 75-100 new employees each year).

"Yer right you give a monkeys go give them a mark"
oooh get you!

David

[Oxbeast]

@david petts

Thanks, great posts. The angle that 'Universities don't train people' has been kicked around pretty extensively lately. I always reckoned that the companies turning over millions of pounds (in some cases) should provide training in excavati