Students and lecturers at the University of Wales, Newport, have appealed to the wider archaeological community to help save their department.

Third year undergraduate Amy Haskins posted a message on the CBA’s Britarch email list revealing that university authorities plan to axe the archaeology course by 2007. 'We need your help!' she wrote. 'They have taken away our archaeology building, which means that we now have to fit into whatever free space there is on campus, we have lost a lecturer and our lecture time has been cut by almost 50 per cent.'

'This will be a great loss for archaeology in South Wales,' said lecturer Adrian Chadwick. The department is active in research with an enviable publication record. It has strong links with local heritage groups, including the Friends of the Newport Ship. The decision to close the department was taken in August on financial grounds. Students who had been accepted at the university have now been told to reapply elsewhere. As well as considering legal action the 30 current undergraduates organised a demonstration that was reported on the BBC and in the local press and resulted in the university restoring some modules.

Students and staff are particularly angry about the way they learned of the decision. 'The head of Archaeology at Newport, Professor Stephen Aldhouse-Green, only found this out by accident when he overheard a conversation between two members of Estates staff in a corridor!' said Mr Chadwick. University bosses intend redeveloping the Archaeology Centre as a space for Art, Media and Design.

The closure adds to the growing crisis in archaeology teaching in the UK. Even though the subject has never had a higher profile, applications for BA Archaeology degrees have fallen almost every year since 2000. The good university guide published in the Times in May revealed that of 61 subjects ranked by graduates' starting salary, archaeology came last at about UKP13,300 pa. Starting salaries were better for graduates of drama, hospitality and theology. The guide also said: 'Prospects are poor: 11 per cent of [archaeology] graduates are unemployed and 30 per cent are in non-graduate jobs.' Mr Chadwick said: 'I would urge anyone who cares about the provision of academic archaeology in Britain, and about archaeology in South Wales, to write to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, Newport, and to the new Dean of Health and Social Science. It would be particularly good to have the support of leading academics from other archaeology departments in Britain, and from the Council for British Archaeology [CBA], RESCUE and the Institute of Field Archaeologists.'

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