Adrian:
 
     In a private message to you off net I briefly mentioned that I had
     recently participated in an archeological conservation class put on by
     the (US) National Park Service, where the class instructors
     constructed a "site" for excavation. The class excercize was about
     four hours long, and oriented to learning how to do field conservation
     on a variety of materials. It was part of a week-long course, and only
     one of several learning techniques used to teach field conservation
     skills. The participants were all seasoned, experienced archeologists
     and museum conservators. The purpose of the excercize (and the class
     as a whole) was to teach archeologists about some fairly simple,
     expeditious ways to keep artifacts or features from falling apart
     before their eyes, and to teach conservators something about "real
     time" conditions in the field (e.g. bulldozers putting some time
     constraints on how much conservation can be done in the field).
 
     I just have to get my two-cents worth in on this particular thread.
     Its not often an experienced archeologist gets to dig a fake site, and
     I tell you, that fake site dig was frustration itself! A real site
     makes some sort of sense when you excavate it. As you encounter
     stratigraphy, find artifacts, and describe soil types, usually some
     sort of coherant picture emerges that has meaning, even if that
     meaning seems rather obscure. Unless a fake site is carefully
     constructed, those meanings can either be all too clear (which will
     never be the case in real life), or so confusing that no meaning
     exists (as in the case of a site built for conservation training, not
     training in how a site should be taken apart).
 
     As a result of that experience, and having worked in CRM all of my
     21-year career, I would say that there is probably no substitute to
     digging a real site. After all, in a sense we all are students and
     learners on every site we excavate, because no two sites are the same.
     We all make mistakes as we learn the site. How different is that from
     the first time student who has never been on a site before. Hopefully,
     that student is being guided by someone who can help him or her make
     good decisions on how to excavate, and decent interpretations about
     what it is they are finding.
 
     I think there is a place for fake sites as learning tools, and as a
     first step in an education about intelligent digging. The student who
     has a simplified version of what stratigraphy is and how different
     assemblages (in an ideal world) appear in different strata is probably
     well equipped to tackle a real site when it comes along. But I sure
     hope the students are not going straight from the fake site to the
     real site thinking they have experience excavating archeological
     sites. I would hope their apprenticeship would include a professional
     teacher on their first real site before they promote themselves as
     technicians with excavation skill and experience.
 
     How do we guarantee that, unless the teacher on the fake site
     repeatedly states "This is not the way the real site will be, and
     don't think you're an archeologist yet." (Lets not start talking about
     professional registration again!)
 
     Cathy