the following is a report on a round table discussion on field
schools which took place at the EAA conference 2001 in esslingen in
september - thought they might be interesting

Subject: Report on Round table

Attached is my report for The European Archaeologist on our Round
Table.  Let me know if there are any mistakes, additions.

Best wishes,
John

Committee on the Teaching and Training of Archaeologists.

On the recommendation of the Round Table on education, the EAA has agreed
to set up a Committee on the Teaching and Training of Archaeologists.  Its
remit will be to consider university training and 'Continuing Professional
Training' (CPD), that is the life-long learning of all archaeologists,
whether paid or 'amateur'.

A constitution has been drafted which has yet to be agreed with the EAA,
but we are proposing:
a Chair and a small Steering Committee to be elected annually at a Round
Table at the EAA conference;
a 'Committee' which will consist of EAA members who come to the Round
Table, or send in their opinions beforehand;
'Correspondents', an email list of EAA members and others who will be kept
informed of what is going on and contribute to discussions;
Working Parties to sort out specific problems.  These will report to the
Round Table.

At present I am Acting Chair, but I will be replaced by a German academic
to be chosen by our German colleagues.  The Steering Committee has also yet
to be formally appointed, but is likely to include representatives from
Britain, France, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Russia.

We decided to set up a Working Party to report on training in Spain,
chaired by Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero, and a less formal group, led by Ludmila
Koryakova and Olena Smyntyna, to investigate ways of improving academic
exchanges between western and eastern Europe.

There will also be an issue of EJA dedicated to training matters, with
myself acting a 'guest' editor.

The major topic of discussion was the Bologna agreement, under which EU
Ministers of Education agreed that universities should move over to a
Bachelor / Master / Doctorate structure based on modular courses, similar
to that operating in countries such as the USA and Britain.  The Dutch and
Germans are well advanced in rethinking the structure of their university
degrees, but in Britain and Spain no discussion has yet started among
archaeologists about the implications of this.  For Britain, which already
has this structure, we have no general agreement, for instance, about the
role of Masters courses in professional training.  We have no idea what is
happening elsewhere in the EU, if anything!

At this stage I am eager to hear from anyone who wishes to be added to the
email list, and indeed to hear from any organisations across Europe which
are dealing at a national level with training and education.  As previously
mentioned, we have no contacts at all in some countries.

John Collis
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geoff carver
department of anthropology - SUNY buffalo
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http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~gjcarver/