Post 11

Today I`m going to write about the challenges archaeology in my country is currently facing related to different areas such as technology, social matters and education.


Technology
I think this area represents the most important challenge to archaeology in Chile, because we simply don´t have any kind of technology at all. There isn´t any special archaeological center with laboratories or with the technology to work with archaeological material. And the laboratories in my faculty aren´t even laboratories, they are just classrooms with a big table and boxes with bones and pieces of ceramic. All the laboratory tests that the material requires are made in U.S.A. or Europe.
I believe the only solution to the technology problem is to invest money in technology, buy special equipment such as spectrometers, ICPs, HPLCs and that kind of stuff, but the government always has more important problems to solve such as transantiago or public education.


Social Matters
To me, social matters are a waste of time, but I think the most developed area in archaeology in my country is precisely the social area. Everybody cares about social matters and the only thing my teachers talk is about how archaeology can contribute to society, to make the world better and to solve all the humanity problems.


Education
This is another important challenge; it is related to technology because to improve the teaching of archaeology we need to improve the technology. Students need to work with archaeological materials, in excavations and in laboratories, so if we don´t have laboratories, we can´t really learn everything we need.
Another mayor problem is that Archaeology is a very unknown degree only four universities in Chile have this degree and the most important is Universidad de Chile, most of the people doesn´t even know what archaeologists does, so I think it is important to educate people about archaeology and about our history, that is the only way the people and the government will invest money to improve technology and education.


Take care guys