Introduction 2007-08 Project
Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe is a new project funded by Leonardo da Vinci II, the European Commission’s vocational training programme.
It brings together archaeologists from ten countries who will work together to to make it easier for European archaeologists to work in countries other than their own.
The project partners will do this by improving understanding of any barriers that currently exist that hamper archaeologists from working outside their own country, and will explore the requirements for and capacity to provide ‘transparent’ qualifications for archaeologists across Europe. Qualifications are transparent if they are valued and accepted in countries other than where they were issued.
The project’s objectives are to:
- identify barriers to entry to the profession of archaeology and to transnational mobility
- identify labour market information and trends, including training investment, recruitment and career progression difficulties
- establish the number of archaeologists working in each state
- identify training needs and skills shortages
- provide archaeological employers with information to aid business planning and improve organisational performance
It will achieve these objectives by identifying, collecting and disseminating information on archaeologists and archaeological employment across Europe (labour market intelligence), in order for employers, professional associations, the European Association of Archaeologists, training providers and other bodies to:
- develop knowledge of practices and conditions in order to facilitate transnational mobility of labour
- define specific criteria and methodologies to identify training needs across Europe
- improve analysis and anticipation of skills requirements
- enable comparisons between skills requirements in states
Currently this kind of information is unavailable in most of the participants’ countries and it has never been collected or applied on a transnational basis before.