28th October 2008, 10:42 PM
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.
*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.