Hi Geoff,

> excavation is not something german archaeologists
> traditionally have had to deal with: digging was for technicians &
> workers, not for scholars...

Almost all of the excavations I know here in the southwest of
Germany since the late 70s are supervised by professional
archaeologists who are present on the site most of the time.
Regarding education, on the university all of the students of
prehistory had to participate several times in an excavation of
at least 2 months lead by one or more professors of european
prehistory and/or oriental archaeology. Those excavations were/
are part of long term projects that often lasted 5-10 years or
more (Kamid-el-Loz, Lebanon or  Drama, Bulgaria f.ex.). As far as
I know, some of the students have been there 5 times and more
before they accomplished their M.A. or Ph.D. thesis.
In comparison to U.S. standards it might be interesting that the
students not only got the transfer, the accomodation and the
daily meals for free but also were payd a bit for their work
(about $ 200 per month when I was in Lebanon in 1980). To
participate in such a project abroad you first had to absolve an
obligatory field school of at least 2-3 weeks on a site in the
region, that was also performed by the university. In addition to
that, to earn their living and to have some more practical
experience, most students in summer regularly had jobs of several
weeks on excavations of different sites that were supervised by
the official archaeological institutions of the german federal
states. So I don't think digging really is so exotic to german
scholars...
Please excuse my rather poor english. A question in this context:
what does the abbreviation CRM stand for?

Jan.