Participating in the Past: Training and Continuing Education; Access at All Levels

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6.6 Training and Continuing Education; Access at All Levels

Although many correspondents expressed satisfaction about the character and availability of training provision, for others it remained inaccessible, inappropriate or too expensive. However, it was surprising that a number of respondents seemed unaware of web-based directory services providing details of courses etc, such as the CBA’s own site and the Archaeology Training Forum’s Training Online Resource Centre (TORC) web site and it is clear that stronger pointers are required to these.

There was some criticism of universities continuing education departments, once leaders in the voluntary sector field, for their obsession with credits and qualifications. Despite the general quality of courses, there is clearly a far greater demand for hands-on experience than is currently being met (the question of access to excavation experience is addressed below). The wider archaeological community, it appears, is not, for instance, being given sufficient opportunities to learn about the past by handling objects, although increasing amounts of raw material are coming out of the ground, and museum stores are overflowing. Museums are particularly well-placed to offer hands-on experience. The ‘hands-on experience’ is undoubtedly one of the attractions behind the growth of metal detecting, many of whose practitioners have in turn, developed a considerable expertise in artefact identification. There is also clearly an unmet demand for general-training courses in basic field techniques, for instance on topographical and geophysical survey. The largest, and relatively untapped, source of practitioners with relevant skills to pass on is to be found within the commercial archaeology sector.

Although a number of bodies produce introductory publications on archaeological techniques which meet some of the demand, it would seem that there is also further scope for development in this area; for example, by production of training videos, by better targeted manuals and by web-based facilities. It was noted also that ‘roadshows’, locally-hosted but provided nationally or regionally, are a relatively inexpensive way of bringing experts to local audiences. Finally, although there are grant opportunities for training for local groups to increase their expertise they do not seem to be used as much as they could.

  • Recommendation 6: The Archaeology Training Forum should be supported in the provision of practical archaeological training.
  • Recommendation 7: University External Studies Departments should place greater emphasis on courses in practical archaeology.
  • Recommendation 8: Archaeological organisations, including those in the commercial sector, should be encouraged to use their expertise to provide training in practical archaeology for local organisations.
  • Recommendation 9: Information sources about archaeology and in particular the existence of gateway web sites should be better publicised.
  • Recommendation 10: National archaeological organisations should be encouraged to provide roadshows at local level.
  • Recommendation 11: Local groups need to become more active in pursuing training funding opportunities.