The future of archaeology in British universities

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

E-ISSN: 1745-1744|61|232|227-238

ISSN: 0003-598x

Source: Antiquity, Vol.61, Iss.232, 1987-07, pp. : 227-238

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Abstract

A British academic abroad may find it hard to explain why his country – with a lower proportion of school-leavers going to university than in almost any other western state – sees no good cause to improve matters. For archaeology, the recent past, as is set out here, has been a story of disordered attrition; the future seems a choice between planned contraction or unplanned decay. Behind this British-parochial dilemma is a wider issue: should archaeology be a vocational training or part of broad liberal-science education? And the concern as to the minimum size of a viable archaeology department has implications everywhere, especially where archaeology is taught as one element in a broader historical or anthropological field.