Kerry-
 
I think Bill Adams' explanation of what constitutes historical archaeology as
opposd to history, historic preservation, architectural history, etc.
presents my, and the majority of professionals', opinion on the subject.
 
So Silas is listening in now, is he?  I guess I had better watch what I say
;-)
 
Re- your statement:
>>About the training part, I'm curious to know what you think should
>>be required of graduates.  My undergrad did not require a field
>>school (though I took one), but my MA does (and I had to take *another*
>>field school because the requirement was so strict).  I guess I could
>>be "productive," but I know I still have a lot to learn.  Should
>>schools require more "practical" classes in addition to field school?
>>What classes?!
 
I am glad you asked.  If you would like to get ahead in contracting (be
productive), and by that I mean direct a project, be responsible for the
final report and ultimately become an principal investigator, you need to be
able to do a variety of things.
 
You need to be able to write a proposal that includes a detailed research
design stating what you expect to do, why you are doing it, how it will be
scheduled,  what the expected results are, how you plan to prepare a report,
etc.  This needs to be written in clear English for the non-archaeologist, as
well as the professional. It should avoid jargon, redundancies, long boring
sentences and paragraphs with no particular point, be free of misspellings
and typos.  You will also need to know how to prepare budgets to meet
difficult situations in a timely fashion while not blowing away your client
with the price.  You should understand the rudiments and purposes of overhead
and fees.  You need to be familiar with the underlying purpose and intent of
federal laws and regulations.  The actual CFR number to quote from is just
more jargon in most cases, but the underlying purpose and intent of the body
of laws is necessary for you to understand.  You need to know the purpose of
and how to conduct a reconnaissance, an intensive survey, and a testing or
site evaluation.  You won't start by leading data recoveries, so full scale
excavation can be left till later.  However, the more practical field
experience you have, the better, since the people you will direct have tons
of it and are almost certainly going to be better at it than you are.  Learn
to be humble.  No one expects you to know everything in the field, but they
do expect you to have enough sense to consult them since they think they know
how to do things in the field (and they are often right).  To my knowledge
only one school in the Southeast even comes close to teaching these things,
and that is South Florida in Tampa.
 
Once you know how to write a winning proposal (remember you are competing
against some pretty good archaeologists who may know how to get something
done more efficiently and cost effectively than you do), you will need to get
the project organized, hire crew members, and conduct the field work.  To do
this you will need to know what kinds of equipment are really required to do
various types of projects and the field conditions you are likely to
encounter, points of access, etc.  Hiring crew means knowing labor laws, what
you can and cannot say and do, reading between the lines on a resume, etc.
 Doing the field work is the easiest and most fun.  But in the back of your
mind you need to remember constantly why you are doing what you are doing and
how the data you are collecting will be analyzed in the lab.  You cannot just
stick to one approach if it is not working (i.e. not getting the kinds of
info you need to meet the goals of your project).  If you keep focused on the
final goals of the project you won't get bogged down in the details and will
always be trying to find the best way to accomplish the project goal in an
efficient manner.  Trying to do testing when you are really doing intensive
survey is the road to disaster and confusion for you, the client and the
SHPO.  No school seems to teach common sense or the larger view.
 
Blindly taking field notes about the weather and who's sleeping with like in
field school won't cut it.  You will be writing a report based on work
completed and recorded by others, and they may not be around when you start
your analysis and report.  You need to make sure that they record what you
will need.  You also need to make it so easy for them that once you get them
started they will continue to keep good records.  Free-form notebooks like
field school are usually a disaster.  Learning to balance the project
schedule and budget with recording and field methods probably only comes with
experience.  But it helps if you keep in mind the underlying purpose of what
you are doing.
 
Once you have completed field work (and you should be knowledgeable about the
types and purposes of various survey and excavation methods), and you have a
lot of artifacts, maps, notes and other data, you need to keep from spinning
your wheels in the lab.  The lab is where most projects go over budget and
schedule.  You need to assess the data you have, the time and money
available, what you really need the project to accomplish, and then set out
certain minimum laboratory tasks and analyses you can reasonably complete.
 Sure, you may be able to do a minimum vessel count on the material from a
survey, but the point of a survey is to locate, identify, and preliminarily
evaluate a site's function, period of occupation, degree of preservation and
ultimately its significance, not to show how many types analyses you can do.
  You need to match the methods to the goals in the lab just like in the
field.  Universities are pretty good at teaching analyses of one sort or
another, but fall short when it comes to using common sense about the scale
of what is necessary to get the data you need to make the conclusions you
need to make in the real world for a client who does not have any money
toend.
 
Writing is perhaps where students get the least training, and where they need
the most.  I guess writing is left up to the English Department because
anthro professors feel it is not their business to see that their students
can write.  It used to be that people learned to write by the time they
graduated from high school (my father's generation), then by the time the got
a bachelors (my generation), then by a master's (my partner's generation),
and now there are a lot of PhDs who think that long, complex words, sentences
and paragraphs are good English. Run-on sentences, redundancies, a love of
jargon, poor word usage, and convoluted sentence structure are just some of
the problems new MAs all seem to have in common.  They should all be taught
the KISS method.  Writing the final report brings all of the problems of a
lack of a sense of scale, poor planning, poor logic and misapplying methods
to goals sharply into focus.  Nothing shows poor thinking processes more than
writing, and nothing improves thinking processes more than writing, a lot and
often.  If graduate school (or high school, for that matter) could teach
students how to write, most of my complaints about inadequate training would
be addressed.
 
In sum, and beyond what students are already taught, I think that MA
graduates should be able to write clearly and logically, have hands-on
experience with a wide variety of field and laboratory techniques, be able to
write clearly and logically, understand basic anthropological theory and how
to apply it to real world situations in a contracting context, be able to
write clearly and logically, have a working knowledge of the legal aspects of
cultural resource management, be able to write clearly and logically,
understand basic business principals and processes (overhead, cashflow,
budgetting, proposal writing, contracts, interacting with clients and
ethics), and be able to write clearly and logically.
 
I think that universities should institute several changes to address the new
situation in archeology in the United States.  They should hire at least one
 professor who has been in the real world.  They should teach an
undergraduate course covering an introduction to contracting including the
parts of a project (proposal, background research, field work, analysis,
report writing), the underlying purpose of CRM laws, how federal and state
review agencies, contracting firms, universities, and clients interact in
today's world, the legal aspects of contracting from worker's comp to Section
106 to contracts, business administration and ethics, etc. etc.  For students
who want to go on for a masters there might be two tracks, one for those who
will become teachers and one for those will work in contracting.  For those
who will become teachers, nothing would change.  For those who will work in
contracting or in agencies overseeing CRM (probably two-thirds or more) there
should be courses on each of these things in more detail.  (It astounds me to
meet SHPO and federal archaeologists who think that overhead is just a way to
rip off clients.)
 
Students should be required to at least write a thesis at the M.A. level that
follows a project through from the first inkling of an idea to the research
design, field work, analysis and a written report that is thoroughly torn
apart and put back together at least once.  A library thesis or extra final
exams or a couple of extra term papers is a cop out.  If that is what you are
getting at your school you are being cheated.  In addition, an intern program
with a reputable contracting firm would be an excellent idea.  Such a program
would allow a student to  interact with a client and the SHPO, prepare a
proposal, organize and conduct the field work, conduct the analysis, and
write a contract report under the supervision of an experienced professional
in a real world situation.  If the project were large enough and of
sufficient quality, it might be used as a thesis.  South Florida requires
such an internship, if I am not mistaken.  Above all, anthro professors
should not be able to pretend that they have no role in teaching writing
skills.  At all levels (and in all fields, not just anthropology) university
professors should teach their students how to write clearly and to the point
without excess verbiage.
 
You may think that my point of view is unique, that I am just an old fart who
has lost touch with the "reality" of critical theory and all the other stuff
being pushed in universities today.  I would wager, however, that if you
asked any owner of a CRM firm what he or she thinks of the typical recent MA
graduate, he or she would say that students cannot write or think clearly.
 Because it takes us a couple of years of on the job training to correct this
situation, we much prefer to let someone else hire the new graduates and
train them.  We then hire them away, if we can.  Sound cold blooded?  It's
just the truth.  Let me know what you think.
 
Tom Wheaton 8-)>>>