Is a decent specialist report a luxury?

[P Prentice]

so when is an archaeologist a specialist?

[redexile]

Ultimately, we all are. Someone has to draw it all together, but nobody knows everything about everything. It's a team game.

[P Prentice]

Ultimately, we all are. Someone has to draw it all together, but nobody knows everything about everything. It's a team game.

ergo: given there are no requisite credentials or qualifications and that anybody can set themselves up as a specialist; specialists can disagree on anything; some diggers have a wealth of experience that far exceeds that of many new specialists; there are no or too few in-training acolytes - what is wrong with getting a digger to write up the six bits of post-med pot and a few scraps of animal bone and possibly therefore giver their career a bit of a lift?

[redexile]

That's not what I meant - I meant everyone has an area of archaeology which they are more qualified to work in than all the others. I realise everyone has to start somewhere, but you can't let untrained/inexperienced people do stuff without a suitably experienced person checking they've done it right. I presume you wouldn't let a team of people with no digging experience whatsoever dig a site without a more experienced hand there to keep an eye on them. The MPRG standards which we reference in our paper suggests the amount of experience necessary. It's a figure that we all pretty much agreed on as a general guideline - some people obviously learn faster than others. Anyone can set themselves up as an specialist, but when they clearly know nothing about the subject, it becomes pretty obvious very quickly (eg, that 'report' we highlighted in our paper). In the same way, anyone can claim that they're a field archaeologist, but the same applies. You must have come across new diggers who obviously don't have a clue what they're doing (I had one turn up at a site I was running clutching a potting trowel). I presume you wouldn't let them work unsupervised?

[Dinosaur]

...what is wrong with getting a digger to write up...a few scraps of animal bone and possibly therefore giver their career a bit of a lift?

To give a fairly recent example from my own back-log, no one on-site realised at the time the significance of a couple of cow vertebrae in an undated shallow pit - till the bone specialist pointed out they were actually from an auroch...

If it had been left to us/me, the size of the bones would have suggested a post-med cow and the site would merely have got a couple of sentences in the up-coming publication, along the lines of 'no significant archaeology found in these trenches', rather than spawning a dozen C14 dates and plans for a major up-coming excavation. I think maybe that specialist report was probably cost-effective in the long run? :face-thinks:

[redexile]

To give a fairly recent example from my own back-log, no one on-site realised at the time the significance of a couple of cow vertebrae in an undated shallow pit - till the bone specialist pointed out they were actually from an auroch...

If it had been left to us/me, the size of the bones would have suggested a post-med cow and the site would merely have got a couple of sentences in the up-coming publication, along the lines of 'no significant archaeology found in these trenches', rather than spawning a dozen C14 dates and plans for a major up-coming excavation. I think maybe that specialist report was probably cost-effective in the long run? :face-thinks:

Exactly! This happens all the time, and could give loads of examples. My personal recent favourite was a dig near a motte and bailey on the edge of a Roman town. The site supervisor fancied himself as a pot expert, and there he was on the cover of the local paper clutching a complete 'Saxo-Norman' pot and announcing to the world he'd found the (previously unlocated) bailey ditch. I got to look at the same pot a few weeks later (the finds manager smelled a rat) - it was Roman, and so was everything else in the feature. It was a Roman land boundary.

[P Prentice]

i dont think my beef is too different from yours. you are talking about a decline in standards and i am suggesting that the decline is being driven by the market. you highlighted an inadequate report by someone not qualified to write one and i am suggesting that nowadays needs must. it is not possible to compete in the present market by doing the work to the standard that some of us were trained to do. there are though a lot of people out there doing work to a standard they were trained to do but which is far below what could be done. if fieldwork is undertaken at such a poor standard it should be no surprise that analysis and reporting is likewise. if you think that a few shoddy pot reports are a problem i would suggest that you spend a bit more time on sites. and if you think you can organise an alternative system for rectifying the problem, you are clearly ignoring the fact that any such system would be managed by the very same vested interests that have overseen the current one - and made a lot of money in the process

[P Prentice]

If it had been left to us/me, the size of the bones would have suggested a post-med cow

and you had just about got me thinking that you were infallable

[BAJR]

So PP... given that you have relatively succinctly summed up the issues - and Redexiles points are well made allowing this discussion to roll along. ( oh and Dino is only semi-divine )

Perhaps we should look at solutions to the issues. ones that both delve into the murky world of what it is all for... to how a re-evaluation of what is the current norm could work in practice. OR and I am serious... should we all just collectively shrug and pull out the crayons to further dumb down or service to the level of

Pot was found - it was old... and my 3 year old nephew has dun a guid drawin of it for you too... ( no extra cost )...

Invoice... next job please.

It seems to me that here on BAJR we all agree that it is "per ce" wrong and not good for the professional as a whole. but somebody is doing it? Or are we doing it without thinking? Are we the Conservative voter that must be out there but nobody admits to being?

[redexile]

i dont think my beef is too different from yours. you are talking about a decline in standards and i am suggesting that the decline is being driven by the market. you highlighted an inadequate report by someone not qualified to write one and i am suggesting that nowadays needs must. it is not possible to compete in the present market by doing the work to the standard that some of us were trained to do. there are though a lot of people out there doing work to a standard they were trained to do but which is far below what could be done. if fieldwork is undertaken at such a poor standard it should be no surprise that analysis and reporting is likewise. if you think that a few shoddy pot reports are a problem i would suggest that you spend a bit more time on sites. and if you think you can organise an alternative system for rectifying the problem, you are clearly ignoring the fact that any such system would be managed by the very same vested interests that have overseen the current one - and made a lot of money in the process

Absolutely, and we're fully aware of what's going on generally and why these sh*t reports are being done. The point of the paper (and the others we've done in the last 20 years) is to keep pointing this out. The 'vested interests' can carry pretending all is fine, but if there's evidence being published that shows otherwise, then it clearly isn't. We are trying to do something about it (and we're not the only ones) - at the moment, we're gauging interest and are going to take it from there. We might not succeed in changing anything, but you can't win the raffle if you don't buy a ticket, and sitting in the pub whinging never changed anything, which is all most people who are unhappy with the system seem to do