Finding the Next Generation of Specialists

FINDING THE NEXT GENERATION OF SPECIALISTS. A VIEW FROM THE PRINCIPALITY.

Peter Webster

I would like to start off by emphasising my subtitle. This is a view from someone who has operated from Wales for the last 40 years and we do things differently over Offa’s Dyke. We are not immune to the idiocies of English officialdom, but we are sometimes content to wait and see what mistakes are made in England before we adopt some new system. In archaeological matters, the Welsh Archaeological Trust system is different from the English units and has a somewhat different relationship to Cadw from that of the units with English Heritage – if only that we all operate in a much smaller country and are far more likely to know one another. Our networks are closer ones as anyone who has had dealing with what is sometimes called the ‘Tafia’ will attest. So this is to some extent what the late lamented Brian Johnston would have termed ‘a view from the boundary’.

Let me first tell you what we have been doing about teaching samian for the last 30 years or so. I can go back to a series of samian workshops organised by Graham Webster in the early 1970s and run by Geoff, Brian Hartley and Brenda among others. That was based around the Wroxeter collection and ran as a series of weekends over about 3 years (introductory, intermediate, more advanced). After Graham retired, I took it on from the Cardiff Extra-Mural department and we ran two further series in the 1980s and 1990s, the last being based around the collections of the Museum of London.

When we started, it was in the days when one could float an idea to the Head of Extra-Mural Studies and say in effect, ‘this is something we ought to do because it is academically worthwhile, but it will run at a loss because of the number of people we will need to bring in to teach it’ (our ratio of tutors to students was 1:6 approximately). By the time we ran it for the last time in the 1990s, the financial climate had changed and such courses had to break even – which meant subsidy, in this case from English Heritage as part of their training initiative following the Fulford-Huddleston report. I need hardly add that, were we to run the same courses today, the need for subsidy would be even greater.

The various weekend courses did not in themselves produce samian specialists, and were never going to, because it takes a good deal longer than that to pick up the required specialism. It did, however, produce a number of people with some knowledge of samian and an interest in the subject. We were able to harness this interest in two ways. The first was the setting up, in Cardiff, of a small group who worked on samian one evening a week for a 20 week ‘season’ each year. This was run as an extra-mural course, because that fitted in with my job, but it could just as easily been run for, or as part of, a small archaeology club. This group is still running, has renewed its numbers across the years, and will shortly transfer to National Museum premises at Caerleon when I retire from Cardiff University (you may perhaps be able to detect the Tafia at work here). The second by-product of the weekend courses was a series of recording sessions, rubbing large site collections (Richborough, Verulamium, parts of the London collection etc.), an activity which overlapped with participation in the British work at La Graufesenque, only recently concluded, and the recording of various French museum collections (still under way). The result is a group of varying proficiencies but all capable of contributing to the production of publishable samian reports.

I have gone on at some length about what we have been doing because it is the basis of my comments on the subject of training specialists. Let me split my comments into two. Firstly the lessons of the weekend courses:

 They are expensive to run because they require the assembly in one place of the majority of the current band of samian specialists. Without subsidy, this places them out of the price range of the target audience which I take to be finds personnel from units and interested members of local archaeology societies or similar.

 They are capable of producing people who have a reasonable grasp of what samian is about, BUT they do not produce specialists. The best that you can hope for is that unit finds personnel will acquire confidence in the basic level of samian identification and that finds coordinators in the units will end up with a better grasp of what their samian specialists are telling them. One would also hope that some excavators will have a better idea of what they are digging up – but it is, I fear, more likely to be the voluntary rather than the commercial sector who will deem this of importance. If you are lucky, there will be one or two people who may get the bug and go on to pursue samian further.

 However, the major restrictions on participants taking samian forward onto any level are time and books. There just aren’t the copies of the standard books out there and they are very expensive to acquire second hand. Even if you can find them, copies of Stanfield & Simpson or Oswald’s Figure Types will cost in the region of £80-100 each. I haven’t seen a copy of either of the Knorr volumes on the market for some 20 years. Even the more recent Rogers volumes are not easy to obtain. So Units do not have them and most private individuals have difficulty getting hold of them and take some time to assemble a full set. As an aside, I would add that almost all of the standard works are still covered by copyright.

 That covers books, what about time? Here, I come to what I feel is absolutely critical. Unit staff do not have the time to teach themselves samian AND NEITHER DO THEY HAVE THE INCENTIVE. Most will be dealing with a large range of finds of all types and all periods – when are they going to be able to look at just one aspect of this vast collection?. And even if they do, what, other than personal interest, is the point? The units are notorious for their lack of career structure for finds assistants. So we come back to money – what unit employee is going to learn more and more about less and less in order to go nowhere at all. Frankly, unless we can change the mindset of commercial archaeology regarding finds work, we are wasting our time.  Neither am I encouraged by what I see of those who have branched out on their own. Specialist knowledge when it is represented by the solitary specialist working on her or his own is grossly undervalued and therefore underpaid.

 I am not totally despondent. I suspect that in time, the market will find its own solution. As the number of units decline, the prices which the remainder can charge will go up. There are signs that the correlation between dating a site and understanding it is at last dawning on a generation which appears to have forgotten this. Also, looking at the small number of samian specialists currently under 60, one cannot help but feel that rarity value will eventually be followed by increased charges – but I suspect that things will not really change until someone sets up a specialist finds consortium which can deliver a total finds package. Molas seem to have dabbled in that particular pool but pulled back and there is, I gather one other possible model. I am not sure that the current gathering is in the business of waiting for that type of change.

Can I add an aside concerning finds teaching in the universities. The universities are often blamed for not teaching finds to their undergraduates. It is not actually true, there are the courses out there. I suspect, however, that the generation which has been made to take out large loans in order finance itself through university has a considerable incentive to avoid employment which pays peanuts. If you have read the editorial in the recent London Archaeologist you will know that this is not a problem related solely to finds but may be effecting recruitment to university archaeology courses as a whole. In other words, we are back to job prospects and salaries.

Staying with universities, although most undergraduates will receive some instruction on finds, it will be generalised – as it has to be on courses spanning the paleolithic to the post-medieval periods. More detailed work on what is more fashionably called ‘material culture’ often comes in post-graduate courses – usually part-taught Master’s degrees which can lead on to postgraduate research and my impression is that these remain popular.

So why are there not more postgrads coming into samian? It is partly a lack of samian specialists in universities creating a vicious circle – few specialists leading to few specialist courses leading to few research students leading to few specialists etc. But I would also suggest that it is the result of the lack of synthetic works on samian. An MA student with three months to write a dissertation, or an MPhil student with one year to get a thesis together or perhaps demonstrate that the subject can be moved on to a PhD has no more than a month or two (less with the MA student) in which to get the necessary background in their chosen subject. Where, within that time scale, is a prospective research student going to get the requisite samian knowledge?

As Geoff has pointed out the standard works are out of date and, I would add, some of them are difficult to use. There is far too much knowledge sculling around in the heads of specialists or hidden in site reports. Research students do not have the time to search out information which is this buried – they just write samian off as a subject accessible only by séance and find a more amenable subject. So, if we want research students then we need to write those synthetic works – new editions of Oswald & Pryce – a revision of Rogers which has usable figures – a revision of Stanfield & Simpson which does not work on the principle that you know the date of your pot before you start – almost anything in English on East Gaulish samian. Do that and you stand a chance – otherwise retire and grow roses.

Returning to the courses. What are my conclusions from having run what I would describe as a samian self-help group for some 20 years? It is that it is perfectly possible to lead those who have the time (so mainly interested amateurs) through samian to a point where they a can contribute to a publishable report and, in a few cases, write one. Have a look on our website (www.cardiff.ac.uk/learn/ )and make up your own minds. It does, however, require time, space and books – and lots of all three. One needs one reasonably full set of the standard works for every 3 or 4 people plus a large range of other publications. Easy access to a good university or museum library also helps but is not essential. Will it produce the specialists of the future – possibly, but only one or two.

So what am I saying?

 Firstly that to get new specialists one needs to create circumstances where interest can be developed to the point of becoming a specialism – and that needs time and resources in terms of access to sources of information and it means making those sources of information themselves more accessible.

 That the process will be helped immensely if those specialists currently practicing gave thought to producing general synthetic works which will serve as an up-to-date introduction to the subject. This would help to create a place for samian within the research culture of universities.

 That, if this specialist samian study is to become part of the full-time paid archaeology network then a change of mindset within contract archaeology is required – and, I suspect, a change of mindset on the part of specialists.

 That in the world as we currently have it, there is no reason why those who do not earn their living from archaeology should not develop a specialism in samian studies.

I would conclude by pointing out something which Geoff has already said - that of the samian greats from Britain – Oswald, Davies-Pryce, Stanfield, Grace Simpson, Brian Hartley, none earned their living from their samian specialism. We may wish to change that, but I think, in the short term, we might be better to go with the flow. That should not stop us, however, from providing the means by which a new generation can acquire that first level of samian expertise which will allow it to it to understand what samian can and, indeed, cannot do to assist in the dating and interpretation of excavated evidence. Past experience suggests that this is achievable. FINDING THE NEXT GENERATION OF SPECIALISTS. A VIEW FROM THE PRINCIPALITY.

Summary

This is a view of the situation from someone based in a university outside England and thus, to some extend, an outsider to the predominate English climate.

It is also a view informed by courses spread over some 30 years which have aimed at teaching samian to those who are interested but are not necessarily employed in archaeology. These were initially courses run by Birmingham and Cardiff Extra- Mural departments in the 1970s to 1990s, which were followed by work with a group based in Cardiff which has recorded and reported upon samian over the last 15 years or so.

The conclusions drawn from this are:  That workshops extending over just a few weekends do a useful job in increasing knowledge of samian and how it can be studied but they will not on their own produce a new generation of specialists.  That those specialising in finds within the Unit structure have neither the time nor the resources to specialise in one class of finds and that the units, as presently constituted, provide no incentive for them so to do.  That Universities can and do teach finds but that the lack of synthetic works on samian are a disincentive for interested students to specialise.  That, at present, only the interested amateur has the time to assemble the resources and to learn a somewhat arcane discipline. This is not a new situation. It has been true for at least a century and perhaps we should accept it.