Archaeology in Ireland from a Polish perspective

pog it

Nice blog post I just came across.


http://www.drakkart.com/eire2/2007/10/08/archaeology-job-is-over/

Due to so many things that happened during the last 2 weeks I forgot to mention that more than 1 week ago I have quit archaeology company, after more than 1,5 year of my presence in that business.
What can I say about working on archaeological excavation sites in Ireland? For sure there was more pros than cons.
Methodology of excavation in Ireland is completely different to what we have learnt in Poland, and I must admit that our - continental (not only Polish) methodology is much more efficient and systematic than the methodology I experienced in Ireland. Unfortunately lots of our energy and time is being wasted due to the way of digging in Ireland. It is clearly visible on wide sites (couple of hundred square meters). In Poland we divide field to grid of 10 square meters boxes and then divide people to couple of teams of 5 people. Each team cleans surface, explores the archaeological features in the box of 10 square meters, thus having 4 teams of 5 we can very fast explore and record about 80 square meters per day. After each day we have an exact number of 10 square meters boxes of the site completely explored, planned and closed and we don’t need to care about them later. In the Irish methodology we have to clean whole surface of the site (sometimes it is hundred square meters). Usually we need from 1 to 3 days to clean the surface, but quite often it rains and the surface once cleaned is completely disturbed by rain water and it needs another cleaning.
Next thing that was very annoying is the attitude of so called “archaeologists” of National Road Authority (some of them don’t know the basic methods of recording the site). It is obvious that carrying on the works in the heavy rain is completely pointless. You can not clean the surface (which is usually clay), you can not draw the plans and quite often you can not see anything interesting. For many of the National Road Authority inspectors it is not so obvious. They demand to keep people on site sometimes even under very heavy rain. If they were a real archaeologist or if they were at least people with some experience on field they would probably know that people present on site under heavy rain were rather pretending of working than doing something real. That was really annoying, when sometimes we had to dig or to clean the surface under heavy rain only because some ignorant of National Road Authority was going to visit the site.
In Ireland many things, especially the comfort of the work depends on Site Director, his or her experience and attitude to his or her staff. I will describe two completely extreme examples.
Almost half of my time I spent working in Irish archaeology I was working for one very experienced and open minded man from England. He is a person who knows what he is doing and who stick to his plans more or less. He knows his staff well, people’s capabilities and limitations, what is very important he has never been pushing people, trying to use their available power in the most effective way and not wasting time for trying to force anybody to do something that he or she can not do. Most important thing. He knows that most of the site assistants have Master degree in archaeology, and they are more or less experienced people. Work under his orders was very comfortable and easy, and - as far as I know - he has never limited the challenging task to the small group of people. On the contrary he has been trying to give every person of his staff something really interesting to do.
My other site director - an Irish girl - was in the extreme opposition. On her site there was never time and will for discussion or suggestions. Chaotic decisions and orders were changing all the time. All members of the staff were completely annoyed, especially when her decisions were completely irrational and were showing lack of experience in directing the group of archaeologists. Even more annoying was the fact that she was blaming us for her wrong decisions. If someone pointed her out her mistakes was lost completely and could forget about any promotion. Of course I was one of them - when I told here that the camera batteries were not charged. Pushing people all the time, changing moods couple of times per day and limiting the challenging tasks to only small group of people (I don’t blame them) made her staff very nervous and stressed.
The thing completely not understanable for many of us is the way of promotions in many of the archaeology companies. Unfortunately there is many examples when your promotion depends on how fast you lit the cigarette of your boss. There are people in many companies who were site directors in Poland, people with a great field experience who haven’t been promoted for year or two, and at the same time they are people without any archaeological degree, with some experience gained in Ireland who were promoted very fast. The best example is an archaeologist without big experience, who couldn’t speak proper English nor fill the context sheets who became supervisor very fast. I knew also an Irish girl with bachelor degree without any experience except the one got during the studies who became supervisor very quickly.
Some of you probably suspects that I wouldn’t complain if I would be the one of the party. Not at all. There is nothing personal, I was quite happy with my latest promotion and I knew that I got it due to my experience and the work I did. I am challenging myself to acquire in my life as much as I can, but only by my own work and time and energy I devote to the things and not by personal relations, protections or simple “ass licking” (sorry for being vulgar).
So what is good in Irish archaeology firms? I like very much quite easy attitude of the company to its employees. I had never had any problems with holidays, trips to Poland nor with having a day off immediately. Polish archaeologist are usually in much better situation than other Poles employed in Ireland who can not have many holidays, and thus they can not visit Poland so often as we can. Most of the site directors and supervisor are rather easy going people and they don’t make the problems to anybody, so even if you are out of the party and you have no any hopes for being promoted nobody will never make any problems to you. Of course there are exceptions everywhere, however I can not comply on that.
Thanx to my site director I have gained some experience in using new digital equipment that is rather unavailable on excavations in Poland and I could take a challenges that I had never had in Poland due to the lack of equipment or limitations of the budget (due to the new car of the bosses).
The most important advantage is the conditions of work compared to Poland. My friends in Poland are working 10 - 12 hours per day (8 hours of supervising, drawing plans and sections, taking photos and exploring interesting objects and 4 hours of paper work in the office), 6 days a week for 500 - 600 Euro / month. In Poland, usually we do not have cabins on site nor proper place to eat our lunch (usually we do it in the van), our toilet is the nearest forest or bush. And, what is the most annoying, our salaries are often delayed, because one of the bosses is just about to buy a new car or simply to keep our money on his or her account for a couple days to increase the income.
After all I am quite happy with my experience in Irish archaeology and the number of good memories is much bigger than the number of bad ones.
One week ago I have started a new job in the growing IT business.

Riamfada

Its a great blog, a few years old now.I figure there is no one left to write a blog in archaeology anymore.

pog it

Riamfada wrote: »

Its a great blog, a few years old now.I figure there is no one left to write a blog in archaeology anymore.

haha that's true, I got out after a few years and had a lot of grief changing career. Still, was something I had to do

rinuccini

are there any jobs in archaeology these days?

Riamfada

rinuccini wrote: »

are there any jobs in archaeology these days?

Theoretially yes. In reality, unless you lready have a stable one... No

snowdaisy

Rinnucini the wierd thing is there are odd jobs out there. Wages were always poor in archaeology for graduate level positions but now they are back in the dark ages.

Experienced archaeologists with years of experience are mostly unemployed and unemployable as they need half-way realistic wages to help them feed their kids or run a car etc.

Young eager newbies with little or no experience will always get a bit of commercial experience as they can work for minimum wage on a short term job they will have to move half-way across the country for and can only afford to do it if they live in a big manky shared diggers house with cheapo rent, live like a student and dont have a car.

Most companies love these workers.