8th June 2011, 08:45 AM
Yes, but training excavations are run by universities, who are free to set their own staffing levels. The Southport proposals seem to be about volunteers working on commercial sites, which could be controlled through the planning process, meaning that the ratio of volunteers to professional staff could be specified in the brief provided by the Council. I've worked on sites alongside volunteers where the brief stated that there should not be more than 3 volunteers for every 1 professional archaeologist, which meant that if loads of people turned up wanting to volunteer, the unit either had to ration access (ie, each person could only come for a restricted period, so more people were able to work on site for a shorter time), increase the time the site was open to accommodate everyone (not popular with developers so not really done), or had to assign more staff to the site (to maintain the ratio of staff to volunteers). In practise, I found that while there was a small core of volunteers who were happy to come along every day, most just wanted a brief taste of what life was like as an archaeologist (and a fair number left after less than an hour on discovering that commercial sites aren't much like Time Team or Indiana Jones). I also think that the number of commercial sites where volunteers would be clamoring to work is likely to be fairly limited - it's likely to be only those sites where something spectacular or very significant has turned up, or where there's already a public interest.
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum