PRIFYSGOL CYMRU ABERTAWE,
UNIVERSITY OF WALES SWANSEA.
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Apprenticeship as a Research Method
Willeke Wendrich (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of California)
The
study of ancient technology, understanding the chaîne opératoire, the physical
and social contexts, as well as the history of economics, distribution, use and
discard, benefits greatly from hands on experience by the researcher.
Traditional apprenticeships to master a technique typically take multiple years
of increasingly advanced steps. A researcher who lacks this experience and
tries to understand very particular archaeological and technological questions,
may come to skewed or false conclusions. In order to avoid failure of
experiments, and understand the difficulties of particular technologies a sound
research strategy is to take on an abbreviated apprenticeship. Learning from the
specialists, and benefiting directly from their experience by involving them
closely in the experiments thus puts apprenticeship at the cross-roads of
ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology.
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