Southport Consulation

[Relictor]

It's possible that if this became the norm, there would be an increase in the number of professional staff required on commercial sites, as people would need to be employed to provide a suitable ratio of professionals to volunteers,

You are joking right? I mean really?

Just look at class sizes in Schools 1 teacher 30 kids or "so-called" training excavations at Uni 1 member of staff a few second years with 3 weeks experience and 20+ 1st years ......

[gwyl]

You are joking right? I mean really?

Just look at class sizes in Schools 1 teacher 30 kids or "so-called" training excavations at Uni 1 member of staff a few second years with 3 weeks experience and 20+ 1st years ......

don't be so negative

?18,000 and we'll give 1-on-1 tutorials and class sizes no bigger than the pinhead on which these angels dig, dance and drink the night away

where's your sense of the reality of the situation, where we've been left in the lurch like Miss Havisham at the altar by those awful, common labourites and WHO has to pick up the pieces, i ask you?

?18,000 (pa/per head) and i'll supervise oooooooooh hundreds, if you like

[BAJR]

Sorry to say.. Relictor, I take you have not done any of these. There are limits, but there are also possibilities. and work... trust me, I know I am doing it right now. - plus a TV crew

[Marcus Brody]

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.

[Relictor]

Sorry to say.. Relictor, I take you have not done any of these. There are limits, but there are also possibilities. and work... trust me, I know I am doing it right now. - plus a TV crew

You take it wrong

I have a child in school and have taken school parties on site tours of archaeological sites .... so I know the score
I have taught at University and run training excavations .... so once again I know the score
I have run community projects ....
.. oh and as for TV I have been there and done that in several different countries including the UK

So trust me I know what I'm talking about

[Marcus Brody]

I have a child in school and have taken school parties on site tours of archaeological sites .... so I know the score
I have taught at University and run training excavations .... so once again I know the score
I have run community projects ....
.. oh and as for TV I have been there and done that in several different countries including the UK

These are all different situations to what the Southport Group appears to be proposing, which is access for volunteers to work on commercial sites alongside professionals. As I said above, this would be something that could be controlled by the Council stipulating that there must be a certain ratio of professionals present relative to volunteers, to ensure that the work is done to an appropriate standard. It wouldn't be directly comparable to a university or community project, where staffing levels are the sole preserve of the lecturer or society, such sites would be open to external monitoring by the Council's archaeologist, to ensure that the conditions attached to planning consent are met. If public participation was included as part of such a condition, the developer would need to comply - after all, the Council would have only allowed the development to go ahead on the basis that these conditions were met.

I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm an evangelist or apologist for the Southport Group - I do understand that the widespread use of volunteers could pose a threat to professional jobs if developers / contractors were allowed to use them instead of diggers. However, I'm also prepared to accept that there could be some benefits both for the public and diggers if this were implemented in a suitable way, in addition to professional staff.

[gwyl]

there could be some benefits both for the public and diggers if this were implemented in a suitable way, in addition to professional staff.

sorry to be so thick, but why would you want to dig on a commercial site unless it is to get a foot in the door of commercial archaeology; the pressures of time, conditions and often, even, the remains are not conducive to a rewarding experience if your interest is in having a bit of a poke...

i write this as someone who got into professional archaeology through volunteering for DGLA and MoL, before starting work in a unit, so i am not against volunteering, but i don't see it today as the fun thing it was; but perhaps i am getting old and jaded

[Sith]

i write this as someone who got into professional archaeology through volunteering for DGLA and MoL, before starting work in a unit, so i am not against volunteering, but i don't see it today as the fun thing it was; but perhaps i am getting old and jaded

I started out likewise but think it would be nice for people to at least have the opportunity these days.

[P Prentice]

Volunteer dig opportunity in Nottinghamshire!

[INDENT]Excavation of Romano-British site in the Trent Valley, near Collingham in Nottinghamshire.
8th - 19th August 2011
The site is being excavated by the University of Salford's archaeological unit, and for 2 weeks in August they have teamed up with the Nottinghamshire Community Archaeologists to open this developer-led excavation to volunteer diggers.

See the promo video here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hdrJAik_9I


Volunteers from Nottinghamshire/Lincolnshire area should follow the link at the end of the video.

Volunteers from the Manchester/Salford area should check out this link
http://www.salford.ac.uk/news/details/1370 [/INDENT]

[Marcus Brody]

sorry to be so thick, but why would you want to dig on a commercial site unless it is to get a foot in the door of commercial archaeology; the pressures of time, conditions and often, even, the remains are not conducive to a rewarding experience if your interest is in having a bit of a poke...

I made exactly this point on a previous thread, that the benefits of being a local society or voluntary group is that you can pick a site you're interested in and work on that, with a reasonable expectation of finding archaeology, whereas a commercial contractor only gets to dig where there's development, where there's no certainty that there's archaeology present, and with all the usual constraints on time, conditions etc. So I don't think most evaluations or watching briefs would be swamped by volunteers.

However, there are occasional sites that are excavated under commercial conditions where there's a clear public interest, and where local groups would possibly be keen to have the opportunity to actually get involved. The site I mentioned previously, where volunteers were included, was a large Roman site in the centre of a town. It was in a very prominent location, received a lot of coverage, and was widely known as Roman. Therefore, there was already a local interest before the excavation started, and once we were on site, people would frequently stop at the fence for a chat about what we'd found. Within this group there was a subset of people who wanted to take this interest further, not because they wanted to become full-time archaeologists (many had other jobs or were retired), but because they were interested in the history of their town, knew about the significance of the site, and were aware that opportunities to work on such prime sites may only come around once in a generation. Fortunately, the company concerned was able to accommodate them on site. Some were brilliant and required almost no support, some (charitably) were probably a net drain on staff time, in that they needed more supervision than was gained in terms of the additional work they produced, but it was still a worthwhile exercise in terms of the goodwill it fostered with the wider community and with local amateur archaeologists in particular