-----Original Message-----
From: Timothy James Scarlett <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, 15 May 2000 1:34

somewhere has probably done a study on this, but I expect that
>students enter into historical archaeology because they had a mentor
>or teacher that excited them to interdisciplinary and
>cross-disciplinary fields.  Do you know anyone who has continued into
>this discipline when they were in a department hostile to the field of
>historical archaeology?

Er yes me! The department I trained in was called archaeology but really it
was a prehistory department with no teachers in historical archaeology,
soured relations with geography and non existence relations with history.
However to be fair it was a very small department which had to cover the
whole of archaeology because it was the only archaeology department in the
state.

Being a stubborn person who didn't want to be a prehistorian I did two years
of both geography and history and only one of anthropology to round out my
archaeology. I was viewed as something of a odd ball, particularly as I
fought to do my honours in a maritime archaeology subject before the Ph.D in
historical (I lost the fight to do the Ph.D in maritime, but I don't regard
that change of potential career as a crashing mistake). Funny though, the
geography department seemed to keep tabs on me regarding me as a strayed
lamb that had wandered into archaeology by mistake. One of the geography
lecturers was a great help with the honours thesis and basically supervised
one whole chapter for me.

It is very difficult for the student who finds themselves in a position like
this. Not just because it's hard to be different but because you are going
in directions the department can't help you with. You have to re-invent the
wheel in regards to methods, theory, finding resources, using them correctly
etc, etc, and find your own specialised supervision outside the department
from various kindly experts. I learnt how to be an archaeologist at the
department.  I learnt how to be a historical archaeologist off my own bat.

Things are likley to be different for the next crop of students from the
department. They have a lecterer in historical archaeology now who is about
to start a of program in historical archaeology. So these students won't be
going against the flow but with it.

The personal sob story does give me a degree of insight into how important
Ian's point is. I did the two years of history BEFORE starting archaeology
and my archaeology lecturer spent the first year trying to completely alter
the way I thought about facts and data. Historians and archaeologists DO NOT
view the world in the same way, they do not use facts and data the same way
and do not instinctively understand each other.  Archaeologists cannot pick
up decent research and critique methods by a kind of long distance osmosis
just as historians can't become archaeologists by reading a field manual.

Historical archaeologists  really need training in history and geography as
well as archaeology and anthropology. A bit of maths, sciences and languages
too! Just as prehistorians need training in other fields. I doubt any one
department can supply all the necessary but surely they could set up links
to other departments or for that matter universities within cooee. And set
out training paths which will help students work out what units they need to
take to move in different career niches instead of just leaving the students
to struggle.

One of the departments over here which handles a mult-disciplinary subject
has done just that. Set out a variety of paths through different units from
different places which would lead their students to work in different
sections of the heritage industry. I think universities need to think hard
about what they are training their students to do, what work will be
available to them, then help them make the right training choices. Then
perhaps we would not lose so many archaeology honours graduates to careers
in customs, computers, business management, washing dishes or anywhere else
where they can actually get paid work.