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
|