Following on from the great success of the St Leonard's Hospital (2001–2004) and the St Mary's Abbey Precinct (2005) training excavations, York Archaeological Trust has access to a fantastic new site adjacent to St Saviour's Church in the centre of the City and will be running a training excavation throughout the summer of 2006. (Note this is a change to initial plans.)

The training excavation will run from the 20th of June until the 9th of September 2006 and is open to anybody over the age of 16 (16 as a lower age limit is negotiable, please contact below). People can come for as long as they want, be it for a one-day taster or a module over several weeks.

The training will include excavation, recording, planning, drawing and finds processing. Any specific requests for training can be made (contact below). Professional field archaeologists, who routinely run and excavate archaeological sites, give all of the training that is offered.

It is important to mention that the archaeology will be excavated and recorded by the trainees; the trainers are there purely to teach and assist when required. It is a field-based training programme where people learn by doing the excavation, discovering and recording the archaeology themselves, rather than by taking classroom-based tuition.

Costs depend on how long you want to stay, but range from as little as £50 per day for taster courses and £200 for a one-week module (please contact below for more details). Accommodation is available from the 9th July onwards (at a very reasonable rate for York in the summer time), otherwise there are countless other places to stay very close to the site.

More information and booking details on the YAT website http://www.yorkarchaeology.co.uk

Further to this, visitors to Dig (the new archaeological adventure centre) will be able to opt to participate in additional workshop activities and a guided tour of the training excavation. For more information see

http://www.digyork.co.uk/
and
http://www.digyork.co.uk/cgi-bin/template.pl?t=npd&ID=5

How come it cost so much?
My son is going to collage to study archeology and he realy wants to do well but the cost of stuff like this is so expensive on top of all the other cost of studying.
why do places like this charge when they are getting free workers to do the dirty work shouldent it be the other way round the workers get payed to work?

quote:

Costs depend on how long you want to stay, but range from as little as £50 per day for taster courses and £200 for a one-week module (please contact below for more details). Accommodation is available from the 9th July onwards (at a very reasonable rate for York in the summer time), otherwise there are countless other places to stay very close to the site.

That's how this kind of archaeology is funded. These are research digs rather than rescue digs, so there is no contractor to pay for them. The people providing the teaching will need to be paid, research, tools & facilities will need to be provided & post excavation work will be needed too.

This all adds up & on the Training dig I am involved in there was only a couple of hundred pounds left over at the end of last year's dig - and that one is staffed mainly by volunteers. That money will be ploughed back into providing improved equipment & facilities for this year.

Good question Lily ! I hope my answer will explain sufficiently.

Some training excavations receive charitable grants, LHI funds or monies from other sources such universities. However, the YAT training dig is self-funding and charges the amount it does in order to meet its own costs. It does not set out to make a profit as risks making a loss if there are not enough bookings. It the dig did did not charge those sort of figures it would not run, simple as that.

It does not use trainees as an unpaid labour force for developed funded excavations.

However, the costs that the unit has to cover are broadly the same as those encountered on excavations undertaken as part of their core business in developer funded commercial archaeology. These costs, usually passed on in tender contracts to the developers, include salaries of professional archaeologists, hiring of fencing, toilets, office and storage cabins, post-excavation analysis of the written records and of the finds, conservation of finds, environmental sample analysis, storage of finds and publication of excavation reports. In the case of commercial archaeology the developed pays the unit to undertake the work, in the case of the training dig the trainees pay for their training and contribute to the other associated costs involved.

The participants receive very high quality training from professional archaeologists who routinely work in commercial archaeology. The emphasis is on learning in a paced, methodical, structured environment. The pace of digging is therefore very slow compared to that of experienced diggers on commercial excavations. This training is of sufficient quality and relevance to prepare the participants for a career in commercial field archaeology if they so wish. A number of previous participants (including myself) have found professional work in archaeology as a direct result of skills and experience gained through this sort of training. In archaeology students get academic training for a career in archaeology at uni and are willing (if not happy!) to pay for that. The trainign in the practical side of archaeology often required financial outlay too, as Uni courses do not always provide it. Uni fees pay for tution just as training dig fees pay for tuition.

As well as people wanting a career in archaeology many people come and dig for the pleasure of it or to gain experience in a different aspect of archaeology from that encountered in local archaeological society projects. As an amateur archaeologist opportunities to dig on deep stratified urban sites in ancient places like York are few and far between and so a lot of trainees choose York to come and gain experience to take away to their local socieites, or just to enjoy the archaeology for its own sake.

At the end of the day there are a lot of choices out there for people wishing to learn field archaeology but the experiences, costs and quality of training vary greatly. It is all personal choice and preference when it comes down to it. I am able to recommend the YAT dig from personal experience but would suggest anyone seeking training for whatever reason, does their own research - asking around in uni departments, talking to local amateur groups etc.

Oops - Eileen got in before me ! And said more or less the same very effectively but in far fewer words.....

Oh well !

Don't post here very often these days. When did they remove the edit function???