23rd April 2006, 01:46 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by troll
Smacks of an attempt to belittle the qualifications required to work as a professional archaeologist.Let me guess.....qualified archaeologists are a pain in the arse....lets populate the units with NVQ people-after all, labourers are labourers right? NVQs are useful gauges of an individuals practical abilities.They are not and will never be degrees.BA or MA.A workforce populated by NVQ workers would obviously be a cheaper option.Make your mind up industry-do you want professional qualified archaeologists or a blind but skilled labouring workforce?
..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)
I think that is a partial belittlement of skilled field archaeologists in itself. It is a skilled job and cannot be undermined by reducing the qualifications required. Ultimately, if you don't have the applied experience you will not be as good as someone who does, and if you do then you should be able to earn a higher wage that someone who doesn't.
I would like to make the point that I do not percieve the qualifications exhibited throughout the profession as a true reflection of the skills present or required. As was said, the requirements are different for different jobs. If someone wanted to enter the profession as a Grade1 and did not intend to rise about Supervisor level, for instance (an approach some people have taken!), throughout their career then they could adequately achive this and be as skilled without the requirement to do a degree. THE REASON BEING, A DEGREE DOES NOT TEACH YOU HOW TO DIG! They may well benefit from a doing a degree, for instance through aspects of theory, or understanding of applications for scientific analysise/techniques etc. However, that lack of a degree would be a reflection of the lack of availability of an appropriate qualification to they're job description (and a lot of that CAN be picked up on route - chat to a specialist).
As it stands, many university departments would not be in a position to teach professional field archaeology to an appropriate level, due to the lack of input from field archies in those academic departments (not to say it doesn't exist, merely that it is restricted in comparison to academic orientated staff in universities). Where are the practical/methodological archaeologists in universities - they're there but they're doing other stuff (maybe its a result of universities being pushed more and more into the cut and thrust of business justification and financially sound research? Someone else can answer that one).
On the other hand I agree that NVQs etc are not comparable - but thats because they are designed to fulfill a completely different role. We do not have a current qualification which teaches field archaeology, do we? And if there was one, would there be a significant drop-off in university applications for archaeology, if it was marketed appropriately?
Gizza job!!!!! ....please!!!!!