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Too
harsh on EH
You were
a bit harsh on English Heritage (EH) regarding the trainee wage
(Digger 23). The people who take these positions would probably
not get a look in
with most 'professional units'. Don't forget, there are enough
so-called training
digs that charge a king's ransom for the privilege of telling
people how to hold a
trowel. The experience with EH can only help them get more work,
that is if
working in Whitby in the autumn doesn't put them off archaeology
for life!
I don't think a fuss would have been made
if EH had advertised the positions as
voluntary. Also, you can't compare the work of a trainee with
that of a site assistant. I can't imagine trainees being able
to make complete sense of stratigraphy and their speed and quality
of work is not likely to be great.
I am thankful that I turned the Whitby
job down after reading that trainees would be
paired with experienced diggers. Maybe you could ask EH if they
planned to pay
those diggers who had trainees a better wage? More work demands
more money.
Doesn't it..?
EH training 'the way forward'
As a 'graduate' of the English Heritage
(EH) archaeological trainee scheme, I feel
I have to defend it.
You say that there is no formal training
on the scheme. But surely the only way to
become a decent digger is through practical experience and asking
more
experienced site staff their advice? On the EH digs I've been
on everyone from the
project manager downwards was dead friendly and helpful. You
get to work on
all parts of the site, learn how to use the equipment, get talks
and informal site
visits. When was the last time you got this working on a developer-funded
site, eh?
You also say that £10,200 pa is bad!
OK £5.45 an hour isn't good, but then no job
in archaeology pays well. If you take the cheap accommodation
(£10 a week) into
account, it is not much worse than your bog standard site assistant's
post (who has
to work the full week without the trainees' perks). Anyway, with
EH training I easily
walked into a site assistant job at the dizzy heights of £12,000
a year.
I think you are well off the mark criticising
the EH training posts. They are one of the few good things to
happen in archaeology in the past few years. It's worth putting
up with the money aspect for a short time, and having seen the
miserable experiences of fresh-faced graduates in contracting
units, schemes like the EH one has got to be the way forward.
So there!
'Avoid
Trent and Peak Unit' - TPAU
Once again, Trent and Peak Archaeology
Unit have laid everyone off, including the assistant supervisors.
This is the second time in a year this
has happened, but now there isn't even the prospect of future
work. How can a unit that should have control over two counties
be so crap? The answer is simple. The people at the top do not
value their staff.
They show diggers and supervisors no respect and no trust. Diggers
are not even
allowed to fill out context sheets, and you need divine intervention
to even look at
the EDM.
This is a unit to avoid.
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