2nd May 2013, 11:45 AM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:3) Prohibit commercial archaeological concerns from undertaking evaluation or excavationWhy, and who do you envisage carrying out any archaeological work?
After all elsewhere in Europe all archaeology is still undertaken as commercial work, even if the results are published as academic studies, and the contracting bodies are universities, county museum services etc. funnily enough no local amateur societies to my knowledge! & in some places expressly forbidden from investigations without an academic agenda and steering committee. Perhaps a codicil, that all archaeological work be published in an appropriate place, defined by the monitoring archaeological body, at an appropriate level. A sort of Level 1 to Level 5 scale that goes from a note in CBA & County Journal or whatever to all-dancing, multimedia website, monograph blahblahblah
But as for the rest, can't disagree. Although a codicil to the appropriately qualified BA/MA/PhD thing; were the skills passport to be effective, then complementary academic courses could furnish a passport, so that a more career-practice route could run in tandem with a more solidly academic route; given that the point has also been made that academics don't perceive their role to be to make archaeologists, then graduates are less field-staff than trainee managers, and by that account while not necessarily unable to dig, site-excavation is not their primary role - rather managing it is. those that have come up through excavation (as i suspect will happen, again, over the coming decade or so) ought to be able to hop from field to desk (and management & accountability, which is basically what the licence enshrines) so long as they can demonstrate capabilities, practical and academic, within the parameters of the postulated licence. but it's only a thought.
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