ARTICULACIÓN DE LA RODILLA

As can be seen with the resurgent popularity of books [11], films [155-158] and television programmes [159] dedicated to archaeological discovery, people are genuinely intrigued by the past, how our ancestors lived and the process of detective work that goes in to uncovering the hidden secrets locked away in archaeological sites. Behind the mass-market appeal that archaeology possesses lays an enormous array of academic and commercial interests. The efforts that are required to organise, undertake and analyse the results of an archaeological excavation are significant, with a huge industry being solely focussed on the development of archaeological techniques and processes.

As a subject of academic and scientific endeavour, archaeology draws upon a wide variety of disciplines, with elements of anthropology, history, physics, chemistry, geography, geology and statistics being directly involved in the excavation process and analysis of archaeological site data. In order to excel, an archaeologist needs to be familiar with the practical aspects of excavation work as well as the analytical and organisational approaches needed to draw conclusions and assess and validate findings. This broad scope of coverage is a significant challenge to those tasked with designing courses to teach students archaeology, with educators often adopting a predominantly theory- based approach to teaching which focuses on developing transferrable skills and imparting an understanding of the scientific rationale and processes entrenched within archaeology. Whilst this focus is able to provide a broad academic background to students, it does not provide many opportunities to develop specific and specialised practical skills. Thus, newly graduating students often have a skill set which fails to meet the expectations and needs of industry practitioners [160]. In this way, a purely theory-based approach can be seen to exasperate the culture clash between industry and academia [161, 162]. In 2004 this issue was recognised by the Higher Education Academy subject centre for History, Classics and Archaeology [163], with the plenary session of the TAG 2004 conference being used to encourage academics to more actively and explicitly engage in discussing the

ways in which innovation in teaching can help better prepare archaeology students for industrial practice [164].

Archaeology is appealing on both sociological and historical levels; the core process of exploration that leads to the uncovering of the past can be highly engaging as shown by the level of interest in archaeology in the public perception. Given this, it would seem that archaeology is a subject that is well suited to the application of exploratory learning techniques. Indeed, much of archaeology concerns itself with the exploration of the origins and development of human cultures as can be seen by the way in which the attribution of the basilica used in the LAVA case study is directly related to the ability to identify cultural artefacts and effects within the basilica grounds [16, 165, 166]. However, this assumed suitability does not automatically translate into well-formed educational activities. When developing exploratory learning materials for the teaching of archaeology, faculty are often faced with a number of barriers that make it difficult for learning scenarios to be developed which encompass both the theoretical and practical elements associated with archaeological excavation work.

Conceptualising archaeological processes and developing realistic learning scenarios that encompass all aspects of a site’s excavation is difficult to do owing to the wide variety of disciplines that archaeology draws on. This makes it difficult for entire excavation scenarios to be enacted within a classroom environment and so canned scenarios are often developed instead, with each scenario being based on different aspects of excavation work. This approach provides students with an understanding of the required concepts, but not necessarily the relationships between them. In addition to these learning-based challenges, there are a number of physical obstacles which make the teaching of archaeology difficult:

• The locations of excavation sites and students are not generally well matched. Whilst the UK has in excess of 115,000 sites of archaeological interest [167] many of them are located in remote areas of the country and not subject to, or suitable for, active exploration work. In addition, the UK’s sites of archaeological interest are naturally most relevant to those interested in UK history and past cultures, thus students wishing to focus on alternative cultures and civilisations are likely to be forced to travel outwith the UK in order to find sites of direct relevance to their field of study.

• Students wishing to work on an archaeological excavation are likely to find the costs associated with such participation to be high in both financial and temporal terms. In many cases students will be required to pay for their food, lodgings and equipment when participating in an excavation project. This will need to be accounted for by the student and can quickly become prohibitively expensive unless supplementary funding from external bodies and research agencies can be found.

• Finally the destructive nature of the archaeological excavation process adds to the difficulty of enabling students to engage in excavation work. Assuming that a site can be found, and financial support obtained, the number of students that an excavation site can support is naturally limited by its size. Unlike other learning processes which can be repeated over several iterations, excavation work on a single site can only be carried out once as it destroys the underlying structure of the site. This makes it impossible for multiple students to carry out the same activity several times and as such it is difficult to scale student participation in excavation projects to accommodate large class sizes.

In addition, the destructive nature of the excavation process also has an impact on the types of role that students are likely to be granted on an excavation site. As mistakes are likely to be irrecoverable, students are generally only permitted to participate at a low level in the project team hierarchy. This effectively limits their input in the excavation process; they are generally unable to engage with the planning and organisational practices associated with archaeological excavation work and as such are usually only afforded limited exposure to experience the ways in which an excavation project is planned, executed and analysed. From an educational perspective it is desirable for the excavation process to be opened to a wider audience, with students empowered to assume a variety of roles so that they can experiment with and reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of a number of different working practices. Thus enabling them to readily understand the results that different archaeological processes achieve and the impact they have on the environment of the excavation site. To this end an excavation simulator has been developed that provides opportunities for students to engage with an excavation scenario based on real world excavation data. This exposure allows students to more readily gain an understanding of the ways in which excavation work is planned and undertaken, whilst also allowing them to assume a managerial role in the excavation process – a level of access not normally granted to students participating in real world excavation projects.