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chiz Wrote:Some sites may appear to be straightforward, but are they really straightforward? ]
well yes they often are. i have dug over a hundred sites (not including evaluations) and some of them could have been done by a novice whilst others i still fret about despite having published the report. for some of these the team employed were probably not as skilled as they could have been and certainly not as skilled as they thought they were and i'm including old lags. on these sites - if you havent sorted it out on site you certainly wont sort it out in post ex. but at the other end of the spectrum there are for instance, open sites in gravel where stratigraphy is limited and homogenous fills defy meaningful interpretation so a less skilled digger will produce the same results as a skillful one - despite the amount of fanciful verbage on the context sheet.
horses for courses?
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers
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what if you looked at all excavation as a proceedure to retrive 160 radiocarbon dates, what dos fuzzy data or cost effectivness mean then. This so called industry is based on the principles of rescue. You rescue what you can and you get to rescue what you can by negotiating a silly price which will never cover fuzzy data or ever mean anything in cost effectivness. All your digs are pantomines. You will be constantly turning blind eyes to a myriade of recordable things and selecting your own narrow narative. Even the inadequate contract soon to end digger will be part of the stage. As oxbeast has pointed out you can get ones that have had fifty grand spent on them. how much more training does it need when you can get anybody to dig which is what fame does and its management has every compunction to hire any old digger because archaeology belongs to the people...In my experience the difference between a crap digger and a brillient one is not measurable partly because they cant be working on the same unknown and presumably are equally porducing relevant fuzzy data.
Reason: your past is my past
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Dinosaur Wrote:round here supervisors/POs............get paid more cos we're the good diggers
if I'm spending all day teaching someone to do a (probably mediocre) job on something I could have done in 5 minutes then another job ain't getting done
surely regardless of getting ones hands dirty a supervisor is paid to supervise and a project officer is paid to lurk in the site hut pretending to do something important or even direct the excavation? part and parcel of the respomnsibility is to train the less adept to become more cost efficient - this is how the real world works
if i thought my po's and supervisors resented training junior staff i would sack them for incompetence
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers
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Who said anything about resenting training people? I'm all for it, doesn't mean its going to happen though
As for gravel sites, judging by my experiences (one site last year in particular) staff (including some POs) from lego-block outfits can dig the soily bits in the top of features but are mystified by anything backfilled with gravel, so anything like palisade trenches and graves are just going to get recorded as shallow gullies and shallow oval hollows (ie just the post-backfilling subsidence) and then the, ahem, supervisor/SPO has to step in and dig the other 90% for them, if of course they're up to the task...
Have too many examples to mention of old (actually mostly not that old) sites which I've had to deal with (am writing up several right now) where it's quite clear how poor the original work was, the skill is in spotting the occasional ray of competent sunshine. Unfortunately you usually just have to go with whatever the original recorder wrote - have a slight advantage with some of the current stuff since it's since been area-excavated meaning it gives me a measure of how much b*****s is contained in the rest. Could people writing up fieldwalking projects please explain, in as much detail as possible, exactly how the work was done? Sooooo much unuseable data :face-crying:
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I may be a lone voice here, but......is there a case for commercial units forging closer ties with universities, to provide that aspect of vocational training that universities appear 'reluctant' to involve in and at the same time returning archaeology to some vestige of academic principle. I just have the feeling that if archaeological practice and academia become totally detached neither archaeology nor archaeologists will benefit in the long run.......(I agree I am prejudiced. I work for a University, I am currently completing my Masters I LIKE UNIVERSITIES!! I even like students!!)
With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...
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Although we (a commercial unit) have lots of links with universities (mainly with specialists to be fair, but some academics too), and would certainly be open to the idea, we've always got the impression that a lot of the mainstream academic staff would treat having direct dealings with us something akin to climbing into bed with the anti-Christ (a bit like many of them seem to persist in remaining stolidly oblivious to the existence of grey literature, to judge by 'academic' tomes that keep coming out) - and as it happens we've been passed (by one of the staff in question who thought it was funny) a copy of a 'memo to all staff' at one nearby Uni basically banning them from having any contact which didn't involve cash being transferred into a university bank account. Luckily that's been pretty much ignored. Some courses like conservation seem to pretty much rely on material from commercial sites for their students to work on - as an e.g. I've got a large cemetery assemblage (lots of shiny stuff) which has had unofficial free storage for the last 10 years in exchange for it being used on a regular basis as a teaching collection, better than it rotting in a museum store somewhere.
A large part of the issue of collaborative work with Unis would be who paid for it - IFA culture says we can't use unpaid students on commercial jobs, and Unis arent going to pay for a load of our guys on 'research' digs as long as they think they've got competent 'in house' staff for free :face-thinks:
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a lot of the universities are involved in commercial archaeology by route of dumping their useless postgrade/ phds into curator jobs. Have you got any round your way. I find that they are often the ultimate definition of incompetant and definatly commercially stupid.
Reason: your past is my past
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Quote:Unis arent going to pay for a load of our guys on 'research' digs as long as they think they've got competent 'in house' staff for free
The uni research dig I've been involved with, hire some professionals to direct trenches and train the students. There aren't enough staff left in-house to supervise and train at that level.
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Dinosaur Wrote:.... we've always got the impression that a lot of the mainstream academic staff would treat having direct dealings with us something akin to climbing into bed with the anti-Christ .... A large part of the issue of collaborative work with Unis would be who paid for it - IFA culture says we can't use unpaid students on commercial jobs
I recognise that there are issues regarding paying staff/students, but I was wondering more about the exchange of data and ideas and integrating students into the archaeological millieu, rather than the salary bill. Surely there is always scope of some kind for students to be involved on a voluntary basis providing they are not replacing paid staff. Judging by the number of mails from students to BAJR bemoaning the lack of opportunity or chances to get 'a foot in the door', I would imagine a lot of students would grab any opportunity to engage with the 'muddy side'.....the reverse side of the coin is alluded to by your reference to 'grey literature'. Surely there must also be potential in students/acadmics accessing relatively fresh source data that might be pertinent to future career prospects, rather than necessarily writing another thesis on 'Aspects of Melchester' or some similar site, probably more contemporary to the days of Wheeler/Kenyon than 2012....I agree it might need some bridge building, but the universities input to the FAME conference seems from all reports to be the final statement of boat-burning or creek paddling rather than anything positive. Surely that can't be allowed.....
With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...
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It would be interesting to find out what proportion of the various University departmental incomes come from providing specialist services to commercial contractors - one of our local Unis must have a significant income from it (quite apart from running their own unit), we certainly give them plenty of trade, and not just within the archeology department. Surely it's in their own interests in this day and age to have as tight links with commercial units as possible as an extra funding stream, and I'm sure student participation could be more actively worked into that
