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What’s Wrong with Field Schools? - Ep 286
685 Plays7 months ago
Completing a field school is usually a requirement to get any job in CRM. The quality and cost of that field can vary dramatically depending on where you took it. What’s wrong with field schools these days? Do they teach you what you need to know to get a job in CRM? How can they do better? We talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly about field schools on today’s episode.
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/crmarchpodcast/286
Blogs and Resources:
- Bill White: Succinct Research
- Doug Rocks-MacQueen: Doug’s Archaeology
- Chris Webster: DIGTECH LLC
- Andrew Kinkella
Kinkella Teaches Archaeology (Youtube)
Blog: Kinkella Teaches Archaeology
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Transcript
Introduction to CRM Archaeology Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. This is the Serum Archaeology Podcast. It's the show where we pull back the veil of cultural resources management archaeology and discuss the issues that everyone is concerned about. Welcome to the podcast.
Why are field schools problematic?
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the CRM archaeology podcast episode 286 for April 17th, 2024. I'm your host, Chris Webster. On today's show, we talk about field schools and why they seem to be broken. So get your credit card ready because the CRM archaeology podcast starts right now.
00:00:46
Speaker
Welcome to the show, everyone. Joining me today is Bill in a weight room in Northern California. I don't know. Yeah, I'm in Visalia, California. I'm in the weight room. This is what happens at the Holiday Inn Express weight room. You record podcasts. We're not lifting. We're recording podcasts. There you go. And Andrew in California, I assume not in the weight room because I've seen his pictures. Yeah, I'm not in the weight room, dude. I have others lift weights for me, OK?
00:01:15
Speaker
We're just starting off this podcast, throwing people under the bus left and right, man. Then we got Doug in Scotland. I got nothing to say about you, Doug. I'm afraid to say anything right now, man. I'm supposed to pick on Andrew or something like that. I know, right?
Exploring field school options and challenges
00:01:34
Speaker
And our topic today is from Heather, who is currently in Southern California. Heather, how's it going?
00:01:40
Speaker
I'm good. I'm sitting on my couch with pillows and lots of blankets. Definitely not in a weight room. I'm very comfortable. Nice. Well, Doug is the only one not in California because we're actually, we overnighted last night at a winery in Southern California on our way to the California coast. So we are headed there today. Yeah. All right. So with that, as I mentioned, Heather, you've got the topic for today that we came up with and what are we doing?
00:02:08
Speaker
So we're going to talk about the different options of field schools. So I know, you know, this is like the bane of some, some archeologists existence. It's a surprise, I think for a lot of new, new students, archeological students, when they realize they're paying, you know, five, $6,000, of course they're sold. That is going to be in a beautiful location, somewhere exotic and you know, excavates.
00:02:36
Speaker
sites that they read a book about in books, you know, and that sort of thing. But you're going to pay a pretty penny to do that. And there's been various different mechanisms that are encouraging the archaeological community to look at
00:02:53
Speaker
field schools in a different manner. And cost is not the only thing. So I thought we could talk about what are the different approaches. One, you know, of course, was COVID that definitely impacted field schools. There's other there's different ways, different, different perspectives on the efficacy and ethical ways of field schools.
Critiques and innovations in field school training
00:03:16
Speaker
And so looking at different options for
00:03:20
Speaker
How does an archeologist learn in a practical manner their craft? So I thought that would be a nice, interesting conversation, especially considering on this podcast, specifically, we have people that have worked all over the world. And so I think, you know, we all have some, some interesting perspectives.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to be a little controversial. What? Yeah, I know. We should ban all field schools. There you go. It's a good start. Yeah. Okay. It's a little more nuanced than that, but honestly, it's pretty
00:03:56
Speaker
So especially when you go into like CRM or development light archeology or wherever you're calling it in your country around the world, basically there's always that like you have a degree and you want you to have had like a field school and ideally a field school in like the country that you're working in, but you know, they'll pretty much accept anything if you're desperate enough for staff.
00:04:17
Speaker
And like, oh man, it's so variable in quality and what you're doing. And really what it comes down to is a couple of weeks of digging experience. Like some UK universities used to have, oh, you needed like eight weeks to graduate or 12 weeks or something like that. And now most all of them are down to like two weeks or like there's no digging requirement whatsoever. And
00:04:42
Speaker
that's just not enough time to do archaeology. And I think it's horrible because you're also putting in people who have never dug on sometimes really important sites. And we all know archaeology depends on the archaeology, the time period and stuff like that, but they'll give them heliolithic cave sites where you need to be excavating at
00:05:05
Speaker
a centimeter at a time with some really fine stratigraphy and stuff like that. Basically, if you're learning, you have no idea what you're looking at. If we all go back to that first time when we were digging stuff, and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, look for the change of stratigraphy. And really, all you're doing is you're still traveling. You're like, oh, yeah, the change. I'm totally finding that as you just keep digging until you over-dig and you hope you hit something different.
00:05:34
Speaker
or you don't, or you ask a million questions, you're like, has it changed? Has it changed? Or they point out something that, obviously, once you're a professional archaeologist, you can see, you're like, oh, yeah, you can feel the difference with your trial. But man, I remember going through like field school and being told that they're like, yeah, can't you feel the difference? And you're like, no, no, I cannot. I have no idea what you're talking about, like the difference in soil and what I'm supposed to be feeling with a trial and stuff like that. And you're basically dropping people in on like somewhat important archaeology.
00:06:04
Speaker
And I just feel like before you even get to do that, maybe we, okay, maybe we should totally get rid of field schools, but they should actually put you in a sandbox first. And it's like, with fake host holes and fire pits, and then like, let you do it. Like seriously, they should just, behind all anthropology, archeology departments, there should be a giant sandbox.
00:06:29
Speaker
That should be your first experience. Listen, I'm not going to deny that. I think that the training leading up to a field school should be a little bit more modern. Maybe not a sandbox, but maybe even something in virtual reality or something like that. Something that is non-destructive and non-sensitive and things like that.
00:06:49
Speaker
That being said, the tradition of having students, people who are learning, working on real things, potentially sensitive, sensitive things. I mean, I had, I told you guys this last time, I had my first colonoscopy on Friday, just like a week and a half ago. And was it a week and a half ago?
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah. I know. Right. So first off, go do that. Second, there were at least two people involved in that procedure that were being trained and they didn't specifically tell me that. But when the woman's sticking the IV into my arm and the guy's going, Oh yeah, that looks good. Sure. Yeah. And she's like, are you sure? Does this look okay? And I'm like, does it look okay? It's my arm.
00:07:26
Speaker
And there was somebody else in the procedure room that was also being changed. I don't know what they did because I was out. And so who knows? They could have jammed a camera up my ass for all I know. I mean, I really don't know. But if medical profession can get away with it, I think probably archaeologists can get away with it if it's done in a well-supervised way. And I think that's where the problem lies. And I've always said this. Leadership and supervision in archaeology is garbage. And it starts at the universities and then finishes at CRM companies. And it's garbage throughout.
00:07:57
Speaker
I don't really know how to follow that because it went from like one kind of excavation to another kind of excavation and also I turned 45 this year and so that's not too comforting here to find out that's what's going on that I'm just like you know the crash test dummy there for a lot of other people to
00:08:14
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, I
Curation and operational challenges of field schools
00:08:17
Speaker
hear about that. We can go on about that too, but there's other things too that I personally, I ran, you know, I started as a professor in 2017 and I think I've ran four or five archaeological field schools.
00:08:29
Speaker
And so there's other concerns for me. One huge one is curation. So we go ahead and excavate so that people can learn how to excavate and then where we're going to put the stuff, right? And that seems to be like it's like a secondary consideration. And I don't know how many field school, you know, deposits or collections are filling up.
00:08:49
Speaker
these different repositories because people just needed to learn how to dig or thought they needed how to learn how to dig or professors had no reason to even want to do it. They just did it so that they could get out and have some stuff and have a field school and now as a result of that there's you know collections that are in repositories that didn't from sites that didn't really need to be dug. There's stuff that are in aging professors labs as they retire that are just sitting there that take multiple years and have no home like nowhere to go. The university won't take them anymore.
00:09:18
Speaker
So there's, I mean, you can't really rely anymore like you could in the old days on the university taking all the stuff you dug up over 50 years because now they don't want it. Also, a lot of times it was inappropriately acquired, right? So the whole just dig because I want to dig.
00:09:33
Speaker
The laws have changed now. And so some of that stuff you should never have dug. And the university, it's like kryptonite. They don't want to touch it. And then finally, if you were just going to dig at some, you know, museum in Virginia, that's, you know, Thomas Jefferson. Well, I guess that's a bad one because actually Monticello has an excellent, you know, repository. But a lot of these other, you know, if you just want to dig some plantation, they don't have a quality museum. And so if you were just going to dig it all up, catalog it, then hand it off to, you know, whatever plantation,
00:10:02
Speaker
They don't have curation facilities, so you just kind of dug a site for no reason for fun. And then now it's going to be stuck there for many years. And then the other thing that has been really difficult to navigate as someone who works at a university is the liability. And it's not just the health and safety.
00:10:20
Speaker
It's now, now it is moved into making sure that every student feels good all the time. And if they don't feel happy, then essentially like that's a health violation and that they have, you know, space to, you know, basically complain, right? Like that we're supposed to be trained.
00:10:36
Speaker
Every single person feels absolutely 100% comfortable at every minute while they're asleep, while they're working, while they're doing this. And if that doesn't happen, then it's time to say that that is a problem on the site. I mean, that's different than when I started 20 years ago.
00:10:51
Speaker
20 years ago, folks just wanted to learn how to dig. Now, folks want to learn how to dig while also getting good selfies, while also no one ever say anything controversial, while also everyone being kind every single second in a way that they feel is kind without saying any kind of discriminatory remark whatsoever. Otherwise, now we have to waste 40 minutes a day on a meeting about how someone made a bad joke.
00:11:13
Speaker
about some, you know, mummy that, you know, I don't, I felt that was, you know, that was really inconsiderate. And that really hurt me because what about that mummy's descendants feelings? And you're like, dude, I don't even really know how to respond to that. Like, I don't know what to say, but we're seriously spending
00:11:29
Speaker
40, 50 minutes talking about the appropriateness of mentioning things. So that's another reason why it's not really worth it. And then the final reason is the cost, right? And it's not just the cost of running the field school because I'm also trying to pay stipends and I'm also trying to pay graduate students to work on it and they cost even more and the grants have not increased one bit.
00:11:51
Speaker
So, there's no increase in funding from the main sources, except every student wants to get paid on the whole thing. And in fact, they should be getting paid, but the amount they're getting paid is way higher than anyone can actually afford. So, they've essentially worked themselves out of a job, right?
00:12:07
Speaker
if I get $500,000 from the National Science Foundation to do something, a huge chunk to curation, but then an even huger chunk paying the students and the graduate students, right? And as more and more field schools go this way, like it's just really hard to get that money. And, you know, that that cash evaporates real quick. So all those things working against professors, you know, and I haven't even gotten to like the other more mechanical things with just the university apparatus.
00:12:38
Speaker
Wow. Okay. Well, you've said quite a lot. I have some responses to several of the things that you were talking about. And so I think we should take that in segment two. All right. Sounds good. We'll see after the break. Welcome back to the Sierra Mark podcast episode two 86. And we're talking about the, you know, futility of field schools, sort of.
00:13:04
Speaker
futile. They're not futile. They're just like, we live in a different world is all there is to it. And I think we might've aged out of them. Yeah, maybe Heather, you had some comments on the last segment. Go ahead.
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah, I would just say in general first, and I'm just going to tackle the general and then one of the topics in general. Field schools, I think, are important if they're done correctly. Otherwise, the field school does not necessarily have to happen in the university setting. I think that, you know, it's different. We have Bill and Andrew that different altogether, but there's enough field schools out there that
00:13:40
Speaker
From someone who hires staff and needs to make sure that they're doing the work correctly. Very few people who come from. You know, who are in field schools are really learning. Anything that's helpful in the CRM world and so.
00:13:58
Speaker
It's especially if they are digging in another country. And that's not to say that the that the field school is a bad field school, but it's different. It does not help in the CRM world when you were excavating in Egypt or Greece or England or Ireland. It's a different excavation method and approach. And so it's not helpful. It really is. The only thing that is similar
00:14:28
Speaker
is the general theory, right? And then digging, like I can teach you how to put a shovel in a ground or a trowel, you know, it's those things are not, and that's as far as it goes. Then, so what I think really needs to happen, and this is across the board, this is CRM too, because, you know, I just moved companies and there were some collections in the old company lab that, that I worked at. There were,
00:14:57
Speaker
some collections that were there from prior to me working there, 12 years prior, still sitting on shelves because
00:15:08
Speaker
And it's not about what happens after you're done with your excavation. To me, in my opinion, it is a poor research design. It is a poor methodology. And just exactly what Bill said is that it's not even considered what's going to happen on the curation side.
00:15:28
Speaker
Now, I am seeing that more and more now in mitigation measures where they're really thought out. Somebody who thinks that way and is very much more detailed is actually including these things in mitigation measures, which I think is a good idea to some degree. Sometimes they can be so limiting that it doesn't account for what happens later on down the road. And then you have a
00:15:53
Speaker
a lead agency who's saying, no, you've got to follow the mitigation measures exactly. And they don't work for the project at hand. However.
00:16:03
Speaker
I do think that creating a research design that include, that handles what happens with everything at the end is essential. Like you have to have that. I don't understand why somebody wouldn't be thinking that way, but yeah. Yeah. So that has to be part of the research design. And I think reburial is our friend at reburial to me should be.
00:16:31
Speaker
You know, of course in consultation with the descendant community, right? But I think reburial is really where it's at. It is what allows us to, you're putting it back where it belongs. Of course, it's not in situ anymore, but you are putting it back in the area that it originally came from and having bags. I mean, you can have hundreds and hundreds of bags and boxes, whatever it is that you use.
00:17:00
Speaker
that just sit down the shelf and they're never looked at again. It's ridiculous. It should go back on the ground, in my opinion. But the number one thing is the research design has got to account for what happens with everything at the end.
Alternative training programs in archaeology
00:17:15
Speaker
Right. But also, if we're talking specifically about field schools here, the design of the field school should be treated like a wealth like school. Right. And it seems to me, because obviously, you know, unless you've taught field schools like like Andrew and Bill have,
00:17:29
Speaker
Unless you've taught field schools and set up field schools, I just go off of talking to other people that have been to field schools and they sound like they're all a lot of basically the same kind of thing where the primary goal of the field school is to excavate and research a site, typically for a professor, grad student, something like that. That seems like the primary goal. The secondary goal seems like, hey, maybe you'll learn something along the way. Whereas really the primary goal is for the students to go through a checklist of things that, hey, this is my,
00:17:56
Speaker
quote, on the job training, except it's not a job, you're paying to be there, but it's my first initial training about how to be an archeologist in the field and how to do this. Where's my checklist of things that I need to do and learn in order to make sure that I've done this? You go to any other class in school and it's like, here's the syllabus, here's what you're gonna learn, but you go to a field school and it's like, just shut up and dig and then go get crazy at night, you know, after the digging's over. And it's just like, you know, what's going on there?
00:18:25
Speaker
I do the syllabus. Sure. Yeah. So I have now with my new company where we are, you know, I've developed a program where we're training archeologists for cross-training people in other disciplines, how to become an archeologist, how to work in the field with over, under the supervision of qualified archeologists. And we're teaching
00:18:48
Speaker
how to dig how to excavate how to sample outside of the site so it's in an area just learning how to do things in a methodical manner and so that's how i'm teaching them i'm not teaching them in a site we are teaching them.
00:19:05
Speaker
in basically, you've ever done an exhibition where you kind of go to a school and you teach high schoolers for a day what archaeology is about. It's like that, but in a little bit grander scale. Now, I do want to say one thing. Rebarrel, when it comes to reburial, reburial needs to be done in a very thoughtful way.
00:19:25
Speaker
It needs to be accounted for and recorded so that people understand where the reburial remains are, so that it's not uncovered again accidentally and thought to be something that it is not. So whenever I do reburial, I do it in a very methodical way where we have indicator sand. It is clear that this is not an institute part of the site, and then it's also recorded in the site record.
00:19:55
Speaker
So if you're going to do the reburial, of course, it has to be done in a certain manner.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah, I wanted to go back to what Chris said a little moment ago, because I thought he totally hit the nail on the head in terms of like field schools. You know, field schools are kind of one of two animals. They are either they are either underlined field or they underline school. You know what I mean? And the one that you want from the students perspective is the school one. Right. There are there are field schools that are there to educate you and they have like a syllabus. They have some sort of lesson plan. They have some, you know, some sort of
00:20:28
Speaker
we're going to go through this skill set versus getting there and dig, you know, like the idea of like, oh, you'll just learn it, you know, on the fly. And you kind of do, but it's not the same, you know. And so it's really hard for a student, like impossible, basically, to know what flavor of field school they're getting into. And of course, the one you need is the one that is teaching first and also
00:20:56
Speaker
A while back, you know, I think you were talking about like the sandbox approach or whatever. I just want to say to brag about myself again. You know, I know you're very shocked, but I totally do that. Like there's a there's basically an open field where we start, you know, we do like a fake dig just to get the skill set down before we do anything real. So that's actually the sandbox ideas. I think it's a really great idea and actually really easy for professors to do if they if they so choose.
00:21:25
Speaker
Yeah. Berkeley has one of those too. Yeah. Well, I was actually, so if you don't mind jump, if I jump in there on that comment, cause it was going back and bringing this back to Chris's surgical excavation of his bowels or whatever it was. So actually I got from the doing a sandbox actually came from surgery. So.
00:21:48
Speaker
surgeons actually have whole kits. They're like fake skin kits and fake organ kits that they basically practice. The reason I noticed is there's a company here in Edinburgh that does it, and their whole thing is like, a pilot needs
00:22:05
Speaker
you know like the big commercial pilots get like 20,000 hours of flight time before they're allowed to do the Boeing 737 or 47 or you know all that sort of stuff but surgeons don't and wouldn't you want your surgeon to have like a lot more than like five hours of practice before they open you up and so that's their whole sales pitch is it's actually a series of kits for
00:22:27
Speaker
for surgeons to practice like practice showing up bodies and stuff like that so you don't end up with all these horrible scars and always that you know it's a basic idea i was i was you know you could really do it quite easily you basically you're taking some pets and filling them in with different soils.
00:22:46
Speaker
So if they're looking for the stratigraphy, I always thought that you could do so much more. Because the limit of a field school is it's one site. Now, sometimes field schools in that one site might have a couple of different time periods. It might have that range. But even then, you usually don't get a chance to try a bunch of different things. And we all know in CRM,
00:23:09
Speaker
Even now, we could be going out to any sort of site, and it could be brand new for us. Paleo stuff. I've done North American paleo stuff, but I've never done actually paleo stuff in the UK. I would completely have to start all over again and be a complete loss.
00:23:28
Speaker
even though I'm pretty sure paleo is paleo. Don't tell the paleo people that. Again, it's that idea. You could do a whole range of different things. I just feel like you could also get so much more in and you could keep it
00:23:43
Speaker
more relevant because if you think about it, you're doing a field school and that might be between your freshman and your sophomore year, or it might be between your sophomore and your junior year, which means basically you did maybe a couple of weeks of digging a year ago and then you usually don't do it after you've graduated. So you've basically gone like, yeah, okay, technically you learned how to dig and you did a couple of weeks
00:24:12
Speaker
But you've probably forgot most of that over a year or two. So by the time you actually get to the job, you know, I think there's a lot of loss there. And it would just be easier if like, you know, here's your diploma. And here's...
00:24:29
Speaker
20 hours of free dig time in the sand pit out back before you go to work or something, you know, like a way to refresh your skills. And honestly, I know we're talking field schools, but probably should also do this for like CRM as well. Cause yeah, you can go months, if not years between like digging or digging a particular site. Speak for yourself. I think skills refresher is a great idea. We do that in the, in the scuba diving industry. Sure. Yeah.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know, what's interesting is those are combinations of things that are already kind of put together where I work but haven't really been fully fleshed out. So, they're the Archaeology, Archaeological Research Facility here at UC Berkeley. It's now in an old frat house and so in the courtyard, they did an archaeological excavation and they left one corner of it still open with
00:25:21
Speaker
you know, replica artifacts, right? So there's, you know, mammal bone, so there's cow bone, there's other stuff. There's, you know, flakes and other tools that students have made that are modern. There's bottles and stuff that are antiques that are kind of in there and so you practice mapping. They don't really dig in that but they practice mapping in that thing. But the other thing about identifying artifacts from different, you know, time periods
00:25:44
Speaker
We have these kits that we take to elementary schools and show them these different kinds of artifacts from, you know, indigenous California, Mexican and Hispanic colonial California. We have, you know, ancient Rome ones. We don't really have paleo because there's a lot of sharp rocks in there, right? These are kids. But we do have, you know, kind of replica ceramics, other things that are, you know, similar ceramics that they might have found in Spanish colonial California.
00:26:09
Speaker
things that are replicas of projectile points and seeds and beans and other things. And then students go through an exercise where there's, you know, a box that we create together that has kitty litter, unused kitty litter in it. I got to clarify, unused kitty litter. And they use their brushes to brush away the, you know, stuff and identify those things. And after about six or seven minutes, you know, when they have a handful of things, you ask them questions like, well, why do you think there would have been this, you know, red bone in there?
00:26:36
Speaker
Why do you think that there would have been these beans in there? Why do you think there's a ceramics? What do you think people could have used it for? And then kids go through the motions and then we talk to them about, you know, sediments and artifacts and everything and then they move on to the next station. They go to ancient Rome and then they move on to the next one. It's like, you know, 1800s California. So if you could mix those things together, right? And then just...
00:26:56
Speaker
you know, teach students with these different sandbox things, but then they also have a mapping thing. And then, you know, there's a massive lab full of, you know, training collections that we have. They can actually see real, you know, Mahalika and real things in the lab. Like I think putting that whole thing together could, could replicate a field school in a lot of ways. All right. Yes. Good points. I'm sure we've all got comments on that. Let's do that in our final segment on the other side of the break back in a minute.
00:27:25
Speaker
Welcome back to the Sierra Mark podcast episode 286. We're talking field schools. And Doug, you have some personal experience you want to relate to the audience. Well, it was, it was off of Bill's sort of different ways of doing it. And weirdly enough, just what he was describing on, on, on ways of going about it reminded me of actually high school. So I was lucky enough that one, it was a massively large high school. We had 3000 plus kids.
00:27:52
Speaker
And one of our teachers was an old, well, he used to do CRM. And so he taught an anthropology and archeology class that we could take as some of our electives. And one of the things that he had us do was broke us up in the teams, and then we actually created
00:28:14
Speaker
situations or civilizations or wherever you want. We basically create an archaeological site. At the time, the high school was out in the middle of the Mesa, out in the middle of nowhere. And basically, each group would go out and we'd create artifacts, bury them, and then the other team would excavate them. And then the different teams would compare and be like, all right, so this is what we excavated. And this is the story we think we came up with and all that sort of stuff.
00:28:41
Speaker
obviously because like we're in high school and
00:28:45
Speaker
We knew very little, and you were actually trying to create what you thought the evidence would be. All the stories never lined up, which is a fun exercise. The one group would be like, oh, yeah, we thought this was this. And you're like, yeah, actually, no, 100% totally different and stuff like that. But it was actually a fairly interesting exercise. It sort of reminded me of what Bill was talking about. It could be something that people can do with projects is you actually have the students
00:29:14
Speaker
Think about, it is a pretty good exercise thinking about like, what would survive? What would you think the evidence would be? And then seeing if actually someone else can see that evidence and interpret it in the same way. I suspect it'll be a lot similar to, it'll be fairly similar to what we ended up with, which is completely different wild stories, not related at all to what we thought it was going to be. But there are a lot of ways where you can engage students to actually create
00:29:42
Speaker
the very sites that they're going to be excavating and get the practice that way.
00:29:46
Speaker
Andrew does a really great exercise in his class where he has, it's funny because if you have no idea what's going on and you haven't been told, you could get yourself into a lot more work. But so he has, he tells everybody to, you know what, let's have dinner together. Everybody bring your food. We're going to, you know, all the lecture, we'll have kind of a informal type of class and, and, but we'll have dinner.
00:30:13
Speaker
Like everybody bring your dinner and it'll be fun. And then you show up and then you eat and he's talking and then he says, okay.
00:30:20
Speaker
Do we throw anything away? Now, I don't know if you've changed what you, you know, you know, I have a little but like I don't I don't shock them anymore because OK, because because my because did Heather. I'm just like too popular in my classes. We're getting too big. But but no, but but the idea is the same. Right. The idea is basically to record. I call it the lunch project. It's like.
00:30:45
Speaker
to record the remains of your lunch. So you got to stop, like put it down and then you're like rappers or whatever. You got to like draw your rapper to scale. You got everything. You got to list all the attributes and all that. And then you do a little like two paragraph summary of what does this tell you if archaeologists were digging a thousand years in the future? What does this say of this culture? You know, you're granola rapper. Yeah, that one goes pretty good.
00:31:08
Speaker
Yeah, the nicest or the most healthy food, like if you do a salad with a fork and a knife, you're in more trouble if you eat healthy than if you eat happy food. It's hilarious. Yeah. Every time you come in with a burrito. Right. All you have is a foil wrapper. Lucky you. I had salad. So I had all these utensils and a tin thing. It was foolish. Foolish.
00:31:34
Speaker
But no, it gets him to think it's like, you know, what Doug and and, you know, others of us are saying, it's like it gets you to think in that archaeological mindset and you don't have to be like at the archaeology
Designing intentional and practical field schools
00:31:44
Speaker
site. Yeah, that one works good, you know, and it's it behooves us like me and Bill and others just to try this stuff out, because sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. You know, I've had other things I've tried. I'm like, I didn't work. We're the dam. But the lunch project works pretty. I like it. Pretty good.
00:32:00
Speaker
I think it's a really good example of we have to be intentional in what the practical experiences we're giving students and what the field school is for. So the field school is the opportunity for the professor to have free labor or paid. People are actually paying to labor to work on their project. And that is, if it is, if that's what it is, it is what it is. And on the part of it, they, they get an opportunity to learn along the way.
00:32:29
Speaker
That's fine. But I think there needs to be an intentional method to the creation of these field schools. Right. So, yeah, the field school cannot just be, OK, we're digging holes. And I mean, yeah, I understand you never know sometimes what you're going to encounter right as an archaeologist. And that's part of the learning process. But if you go out there and let's say you you have no curriculum along with it. And I see a lot of field schools like that.
00:32:59
Speaker
That's the key. That's the key word you said was curriculum. They either have a curriculum or they don't.
00:33:05
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that there are different, it could be bitten off in smaller segments. So if you have curriculum and you're using these practical practicums, right? These practical lessons throughout maybe the semester. So it's not a field school where you actually go away. I mean, there's so many different ways of doing this where you're actually teaching the archeologist what they're going to need in a practical sense in the field, whether they go into academia,
00:33:35
Speaker
or they go into CRM. And in CRM, I mean, I can tell you, there's so few schools that are teaching soils and what it is that you're encountering. How do you read the soils? How do you describe the soils? You know, right now, because I'm cross-training certain disciplines. Oh my gosh, I love geologists. They're perfect for cross-training archaeology.
00:34:02
Speaker
Every time, yeah, my entire career, I've had students who are in geology and they kind of crossed over to our side or kept both going, you know? Yeah, I do think it's important as we talk, like, again, archaeology is so far behind academic archaeology in terms of teaching this stuff. You know, it's kind of sad they won't do that. Just nuts and bolts, fun sort of sandbox thing. But I do want to say the best of all is if you have the two stage approach is if you do the sort of sandbox, the lunch project stuff, but then work at a real site to, you know, you want
00:34:31
Speaker
Like, if I'm creating the world's most perfect archaeologist, I want all of it. You know, I want the skill set to be in there first. But then I do want them to have real experience and see like, oh, this is what a real artifact looks like in the soil, because a replication won't look the same. It won't feel the same. Like, if all you know is replications, you won't know what's going on in the real world. So, yeah, perfect world. You have the two stage approach. It's interesting. I've kind of moved into a space where I'm just kind of
00:35:01
Speaker
more interested in just getting contracts with local parks and NPS and other things and then just hiring students to work on the projects and just training them that way because you know, as an employee, it's your actual job. I only get people who are serious, not the ones who just want to get Instagram photos on the beach and you know, monkey around and they're like, this isn't really for me and I'm like, doesn't matter, you still have five more weeks of being with me. So, you get folks who like really want to do it for real
00:35:27
Speaker
you know, the agencies get help, you know, because they're overwhelmed with how much stuff that they have to do. Then people get their first actual line on their resume without having to worry about it, you know, going through a field school first. So if it was me, I would just set up, you know, collaborations with local agencies and stuff to just do part of their
00:35:46
Speaker
obligation since it's a state funded agency helping another one, right? Like it's, you know, people working for one university helping another state funded agency and then have people get paid, have them learn for real, really survey, see actual artifacts and features in the field, not just a photo, but then learn how to take photos, fill out the site forms. I mean, that's pretty much the dimension I'm moving to instead of going on field schools.
00:36:10
Speaker
Yeah, my dream or my ambition is I really think that students should not be paying for field schools anymore. I think they should be paid to go to field schools. And that is totally possible if academic institutions are collaborating with CRM companies, which
00:36:28
Speaker
We've talked about Aetnausium on this podcast, but I think it's important and it's one more way for us to do that. So I think, yeah, I agree with the public agency. I think that's a great idea. But if we're looking at academic institutions wanting to have a regular stream of opportunities for excavation, I think CRM is probably going to provide that a little bit more, but maybe a combination of both.
00:36:54
Speaker
I mean, we've mentioned this, you know, episodes past and stuff like that. And it's one of those things where like, we all have that classic view at the field school, where it's actually excavation. And there are occasionally different field schools that will do like survey and monitoring. But that's like, that's also one of the sort of letdowns is like, yeah, actually a huge percentage of what work you're going to be doing.
00:37:19
Speaker
It's actually going to be a pedestrian survey if you're in the States, shovel to testing if you're out East. In the UK, a huge percentage is you're just going to be watching a bulldozer, a tobacco for weeks on end as it goes through some nice farmer's fields and you find nothing.
00:37:42
Speaker
That happens in the States too, Doug. I know, I know. And SPPs happen in California too, but yeah, I see what you're saying. I mean, yeah, I'm being very generic here. But again, like you should, you should get that whole range of skills. Like it's one of those things like, yeah, if I could really like capture the essence of like what your job's going to be like, it's going to be you standing in a field watching a backhoe for like weeks on end and finding nothing. And if you can do that, you could do archaeology.
00:38:12
Speaker
had survived. I exaggerate, I joke a little bit. But yeah, I don't know. It just seems like there's a lot of ways I think we could be more creative and you could do pedestrian survey and you could do survey of areas, you know, as long as you get like landowner permission or whatnot.
00:38:31
Speaker
to do that as a practice and kind of put people so much so farther ahead in terms of practical skills of day to day. I do some of that stuff on campus because the campus itself has enough land where you can, you know, you can let them walk for a while and kind of take a compass heading and that kind of stuff. So a lot of professors could just do it. They don't even have to go anywhere. You know, they got large land areas on their campus. Yeah.
00:38:56
Speaker
Yeah, I also do pedestrian survey on campus, too. And I teach folks how to use compass and how to draw maps and everything with a pencil and a ruler. But then I also teach them how to use the handheld GPS. And you're right, we just walk out the door. Yeah. And I find that the mapping stuff, the skill sets, that's the better skill set, actually, than the excavation one like that, because if when you think of it, I think mapping takes a lot more skill, really. You know, excavation, for the most part, it's not that hard after you start it, you know,
00:39:26
Speaker
I think that's the big difference between you two, though, because you guys have done CRM, right? And now you're running field schools and you understand what skills are needed and what to put
Bridging the gap between academia and CRM requirements
00:39:35
Speaker
into a field school. But the biggest disparity we have here is that almost every single CRM job out there requires you to go to a field school. And almost every single field school is run by someone who's never done CRM. That's exactly right.
00:39:48
Speaker
Yeah. And not that there's not a cross population of skills there, but just understanding how to do excavation and survey and things like that in the context of CRM versus the context of a, you know, a lifelong academic project, you know, that somebody might retire on. That's a very different way of thinking. I mean, some of the skills are there, but yeah, it's just not quite the same. Chris, you nailed it. Like that's the whole, that's the whole thing. Yeah. And also I watched the hiring thing too. And there's,
00:40:18
Speaker
almost there's borderline zero chance of someone who's really good at CRM, you know, leaving to take way less wages and way more shit to go to academia or them to understand that CRM is way better than this weird little dig that someone else loves so much, you know, and that they should hire someone based on just their PhD scratchings in the sand. Like it's just crazy. The hiring system is crazy in academia.
00:40:44
Speaker
Well, that also influences a bit of, you know, I mean, I'll throw out just a little bit of defense of academia and we've talked about it. It's like, you know, well, as Andrew put it, there's the field and then there's the school part of it. But honestly, like to get tenure and like the entire system is built around the field part and the school's just sort of there, like academia,
00:41:08
Speaker
Most academics, okay, actually I shouldn't say most, but a lot of them don't like teaching. Like they do teaching because that allows them to do the fun research stuff that they really want to do. Unfortunately, I think you can say most.
00:41:24
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know why to, but I really do think like teaching's just sort of tacked on as the day job. I think that unfortunately just permeates down into all, well, across the entire discipline, across all departments, and all the motivation is basically you have to publish, you have to do this, and that's the fun part is the digging. The fun part's not doing the curation. No one likes to do curation except curators.
00:41:50
Speaker
That's a whole different discipline. You know, there's all sorts of stuff. It's basically built so that it's meant to be fields, not school. So I agree, but I do think, I think there's an opportunity. You don't need to bring on somebody who's CRM that's going to quit their CRM and the money that goes with CRM. Although you hear all the time, there is no money in CRM. That's not true for those that are listening. I don't know. I don't see why.
00:42:16
Speaker
institutions don't bring in, and I have seen it, it does happen, but they don't bring in CRM professionals to teach one class or CRM professionals who understand the regulatory side of things to teach one class. They should... Just like Doug said, teaching is the extra thing. None of us are teachers. Yeah.
00:42:37
Speaker
No, no. What I'm saying is though, if the curriculum, right, they're setting up a curriculum for archaeology. Now, the fact that it isn't like this, that is what it is, but it should be like this. Like you have these programs, Sonoma State, right? They have a CRM specific program.
00:42:54
Speaker
They should be bringing in actual CRM professionals who are seasoned CRM professionals who've been working in it for a long time, who understand the regulatory side of things and how CRM fits in the regulatory process. And they should be teaching a class specifically on that.
00:43:11
Speaker
one class, that's all it takes. Nobody has to give up their CRM job. And then you getting an expert who's, who's in it right now, teaching the students that aspect of what they're going into. Like if you're going to prepare people, that's what you should be doing. I think you're right. And I think Sonoma State actually does have people. It's, it's everywhere else, right? It's like where I work. I don't know about where Andrew works, but yeah, it's the same. Yeah. But that's like, that's a part of the teaching though is
00:43:41
Speaker
They have to do that to get paid. I know you're saying just one class, Heather. I totally agree with you. We're all on the same page, which should be not what it is, but I do think part of that is, one, if they've ever done CRM, you don't know who to hire. If I wanted to go out and hire a philosopher,
00:44:04
Speaker
I don't know where I'd start. I even know if I need a philosopher. I probably do. But it's that same sort of concept of they have no idea. And then there's always that risk of they need to teach certain courses. Who's going to take their time, spend extra time to go find someone to teach a course that they're not going to get credit for, that's not going to count towards their tenure, not going to count towards their paycheck. Unfortunately, I think there's a lot holding it back of what it could be.
00:44:33
Speaker
Yeah, I would say just one last little thing that I also noticed the flip side of people in CRM might not necessarily be very good teachers either. Like I've seen that where, you know, they don't know how to or take seriously making a syllabus or that kind of stuff. They're out there just like there aren't everywhere, but that can be a thing.
00:44:50
Speaker
We're giving all these excuses. It doesn't have to be that way. If we're intentionally, we sit down. We're smart people. We're not like, you know, if we sit down and we're actually thinking about what, what is getting a degree for? It's to prepare you for getting a good job.
00:45:09
Speaker
That's what it should be. I know in some cases it's to prepare you maybe to be a researcher, but that's also a job. But it's in bulk, it should be preparing the students that are in your classes, that are in your program to go and be prepared to hit the ground running when they enter the field.
00:45:27
Speaker
That is what it should be doing. And I think I know that that's not the way it is right now, but I think it could change. And I think, you know, there's people on this podcast right here, hosts, that are changing. And so I do think it can change. And the other thing that I'd like to say, just to finish off this subject, is that we need to really shift things in archaeology. This concept that archaeologists are diggers
00:45:55
Speaker
And monitors, yes, that is an aspect of what we do. But if you as a professional archaeologist are working towards you want a long standing career, you should not be focusing on monitoring. Monitoring is important and it should be supervised and it should be considered an important aspect of the job. But it's not just monitoring and it's not just digging. We want people to be
00:46:19
Speaker
to be shifting as in their careers into something that is much more complex than that. This concept that people want to become an archaeologist and I think it's because that's what they've been told. They become an archaeologist and then they're just going to excavate. That's what they want to get paid incrementally more every year, a lot of money to excavate. That's all they want to do is dig and excavate and be in the field. Well, if you want to have this as a long-standing career for your health,
00:46:49
Speaker
And as a professional, growing as a professional, you have to be able to write, you have to be able to understand the regulatory process and work within the regulatory process. There's so many skill sets that can prepare you for a good, well-paying job in this discipline. And if you're stuck in this mindset that an archaeologist is an excavator or a monitor, you're being short-sighted and you're not going to go very far in this business.
00:47:17
Speaker
So I think that, again, these field schools need to teach more than just excavation and it's maybe not field schools, but maybe there should be separate field schools for this regulatory process. Maybe that's where it's at. If we're not going to have a separate class with separate adjunct professors that come in from the professional side, maybe then the field class should be a specific regulatory field class.
00:47:40
Speaker
And that's how it needs to happen. But I just think in general, we need to rethink this. We need to rethink it so that we're preparing archaeologists well so they can have a long-standing career, a well-paid, long-standing career, and not that... Yeah, I'm not going to go into the inside. Welcome to the dark side, Heather. Welcome to the dark side. Yeah, just a challenge. Yeah.
00:48:06
Speaker
Matt, when you were talking about that, Heather, I'll say this last little piece before we shut off. My wife and I have this running joke about every police procedural.
00:48:17
Speaker
After a shooting, which seems to happen every other episode or every episode, they really should have the next episode be the paperwork episode. What you don't ever see is the massive amounts of paperwork. It was real. There'd be a shooting in the first episode of a season, and the next eight episodes, it's just them stuck in a room doing paperwork and talking to lawyers.
00:48:38
Speaker
but yeah we also like in archaeology we're in the same thing like we're always excavation as it were is the shootouts the fun the police the arrests but we never actually do any of the paperwork well there really should be a paperwork field school where you get locked into a room for eight weeks straight it's not that boring it's i call me a nerd but that's actually the fun part but anyway bill did you have one last comment
00:49:03
Speaker
The only thing I wanted to say is, folks who are listening to this, all of us here, we're empowered to make this thing the way we want. Don't sit around and wait for universities and don't wait for your CRM company, their boss, to somehow get it. Don't think that somehow money is going to materialize from a CRM company because they're always whining about money and they never buy assets. It's like a whole company that never buys assets and then just cries about how they don't have any revenue.
00:49:29
Speaker
Not all of them. Just make sure that if you want it to be this way, you find the folks, you put it together and they're never going to pay you to get the change that you're looking for. So professors aren't doing it. Here's a whole network of people who listen to this podcast. There's plenty of people. You can join the APN, connect with them. You can find folks in your area to teach you these skills because your school's not doing it.
00:49:53
Speaker
Don't waste your time pushing your professors to hire quality folks because there's no incentive to get anyone who doesn't just do razzle dazzle, grant-funded, you know, epic stuff. So, you know, they don't get it. They're never going to get it. I've been here for, you know, seven years at Cal. My department will never get it when it comes to hiring people who are going to teach functional skills to get people jobs.
00:50:15
Speaker
I'm telling you from the inside, man, you'll make way more change on the outside doing what you need to do to get what you need to make it in this world than waiting for someone like me who's got a pension, salary, and all that stuff. There's no motivation, nothing. I will get no penalty from teaching people just gibberish.
00:50:33
Speaker
I can do it for the next until I decide to retire, you know, eternity. So, don't wait for me, don't wait for others, you know, find folks on the outside, build your own thing, use the APN, use social media, use whatever it takes, meet people in real life, learn skills, get work, get jobs.
00:50:53
Speaker
Indeed. All right. Well, hey, if anybody listening to this has any comments, we'd love to hear those, you know, post this on social media. We don't generally do that because we're on the show and, you know, pages don't generally like that, but we're posted wherever you're wanting to hear some comments and then also respond to us at the APN. So arcpodnet.com. All right. With that, we will see you guys next time.
00:51:15
Speaker
That's it for another episode of the CRM Archaeology Podcast. Links to some of the items mentioned on the show are in the show notes for this podcast, which can be found at www.arcpodnet.com slash CRMARC Podcast. Please comment and share anywhere you see the show. If you'd like us to answer a question in a future episode, email us. Use the contact form on the website or just email chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Support the show and the network at arcpodnet.com slash members. Get some swag and extra content while you're there. Send us show suggestions and interview suggestions.
00:51:45
Speaker
We want this to be a resource for field technicians everywhere, and we want to know what you want to know about. Goodbye. Yeah, see? It's cut. It's done. What do you mean it's cut? We'll just get goodbye. I'm going to give you all sorts of work with, Chris. Bye, bye, bye. See you guys next time. Adios. Bye. You're all doing it now? Can I save my piece so we can get it on the recording now? Yes, please.
00:52:14
Speaker
All right. Thanks to everyone for joining me this week. Thanks also to listeners for tuning in and we'll see you in the field. Goodbye. We took Bill's speech to heart and we didn't wait for you to do it. You know, my wife's editing these now, so you just gave her a ton of work. I'm just saying.
00:52:49
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.