Yup... BAJR is offering (ha..ha) a few select people the chance to work with me and help the PAS at Thornborough Henges..

There is to be a Metal Detecting Rally to the North from 8th - 10th September.. and by happy coincidence thats just before the BAJR conference.. so if you fancy a couple of days out on the survey and a chance to see the Henges up close and personal.

I have talked to the organsiaer of the RAlly and they are excited about the opportunity for archaeolgoists and detectorists to meet and show that we are both human. The big thing here is the potential for locating flint scatters.. but we will be 'working for the PAS in helping to record and report the finds that come in, photo the find, identify, plot, record etc.

This will be an opportunity to see at first hand what a rally is.. to make a difference and to show that if we all work together we can actually do some good work.

I am afraid places are limited and nope I have no budget.. but intend to go out detecting as well, being trained by detectorists to use the equipment..

essential... a tent (unless I can find a nearby B&B that I can afford) an open mind and some knowledge of flints, finds or recording would be v useful...

We will work the 8th and 9th, then back to York for Saturday Night for the pre conference yatter...

interested? email me... I will want to talk with you and discuss it further. info@bajr.org

cheers :face-stir:

I have to stress that I have talked to/been contacted by the Timewatch, CBA and PAS as well as Andrew Morrison at the Yorkshire Museum (who wil be overall coordinator for us)

Another day another WSI?

Hi folks, a small amount of time on my hands this week has enabled me to complete a Directory of 150 UK and Irish Archaeological Employers, based upon data collated for the Outwage blog site over the past 18 months or so.

Newcomers to archaeology, recent graduates and those desperately seeking new horizons may find the combination of names, addresses, phone numbers and web sites irresistable.

Of course all the other Outwage pages (Archaeological Wages 2006 and Archaeological Pay Rises 2006) are there as well. And as always its absolutely free...my gift to UK and Irish archaeology.

http://www.freewebs.com/outwageuk and then hit the appropriate sidebar.

I will leave this note in the Starting Out in Archaeology section of BAJR but will also post a crib to BAJR Baiting if no-one minds.

I've always found archaeologists (including my current employers )to be a quite fair minded bunch, this is how the other half get treated:

Dear All Once again the actions of the minority are going to have an impact on the majority. You are contracted to WORK from 9am not 9:01, 9:02 or anytime after that. WORK does not constitute walking up the stairs – if you want to get paid for climbing then buy a bucket and a ladder and become a window cleaner or go to the Himalayas and become a sherpa. You are paid to be at your desk doing WORK so if you’re not at your desk doing WORK at 9am you are late – no arguments that’s the way it is. Unfortunately for you in my world there are not degrees of lateness you’re either on time or you are late. One minute, 10 minutes, half an hour it makes no difference you have shown a lack of commitment and respect. I would also like to point out that signing other people in when they are not in the building especially when it has already gone 9am is wholly unacceptable and will be punished. So anyone persistently turning up late (see MY definition above) will be subject to disciplinary action in line with the company’s strict disciplinary procedures. I think it might be prudent at this point to remind you that perks such as Company Bonus and Gym Membership are discretionary and can be withdrawn on an individual basis at any time. So here’s two ways to behave and the theoretical associated consequences :-
Example 1 Turn up every day at 8:59am Turn up one day at 9:01am Give a lame (preventable) excuseGet a written warningTurn up at 9:01am againLose your bonusTurn up at 9:01am againLose your job Example 2 Turn up every day at 0845am Turn up one day at 9:10amApologise profusely Get a slight ticking off The choice is yours and yours alone. It’s like a bank account you can’t make withdrawals until you’ve made some deposits in Example 1 you were overdrawn before you even entered your PIN. In the unlikely event that I haven’t made myself clear please feel free to come and discuss it with me – I’d like that ;o) Best Regards



Of the Clan Sutton

For once i am glad i'm inside hehehe!!![8D]

Have just been working on a paper on volunteers in archaeology. Some interesting views and situations come to light. I would just like to ask the BAJR forum their views on volunteers and volunteering in archaeology.

Reproduced by kind permission of Jeff Hatt (aka Rufus) from UK DetectorNet

This all started from this on Ebay… the ‘famous’ Lord Murray, Archaeologist.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Rare-Excavated-Vik...0004212109

I loved this so much I asked if I could reproduce it here... many thanks and happy reading..



The antiquities trade and the trade in fine art are often parallelled in the search for answers, but this is a futile exercise. The two trades are fundamentally different.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa...041309.htm

Brodie is partly right when he say's

'I think if you investigate a piece of art, generally you can trace back an ownership history. You know who painted the object in the first place, or you hope that you know the painter. I think it is a lot more open than the antiquities trade. I think that is the crucial point. It is more open to investigation.'

The truth is that a painting must be 'known' for it to have any value in the first place and so fine art collectors are scrupulous about all aspects of provenance, because it is certainly in their interest to be so. A wobbly new 'Rembrandt' is really not a Rembrandt until that motion is stilled by the collective efforts of experts in the Rembrandt field. Origin and expert validation combine to create value. Without undergoing that rigorous and exacting process, it is next to worthless. Pity the poor collector who risks a bootsale fiver on a 'might be' Rembrandt only to spend endless sleepless nights fretting over the upcoming decision of the Rembrandt Research Project...he has already formulated plans to move up to a swanky Manhatten apartment, on the proceeds of its sale.

With antiquities we have no added market value to be made from provenance. A dodgy Attic Black-figure vase is as pretty as one with full provenance and looks just as nice in the Manhatten home of crook or judge. No-one has good reason to care much, its value is lodged in the fact that it is what is says on the very pretty tin. Where it comes from is only of concern to academics of Attic Black-figure Vases. And they are secondary figures in all this.

Our Ebay object is the bargain basement end of the scale and yet the provenance of the 'Viking' combe (sic) advertised for sale is no less important from an academic perspective. The problem is similar though, the academic is not of primary concern in the equation, she does not play a crucial part in establishing market value, in fact she is most certainly unwanted in the equation because a 'wrong' decision might cost the trade its investment.

Interestingly our 'Lord' uses spurious academic credentials to bouy up his own trading, because he is smart enough to know that the addition of his 'honours degree' adds something. It adds just enough of the appearance of rigour to assure his buyers that they are buying something they won't regret. So far as they are concerned it is real enough because our 'Lord' says so. They need no more than that. In the cabinet of curiosities with it.

There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. The recent Coenwulf gold coin is a case in point. Here the academic was central to the equation because it was UNIQUE, as all art must be, and her decision was crucial to all value judgements, including academic ones. However, if ten more come on to the market in the next few years, expect her to slip out to the edge.

I'm afraid that until it is always the case that provenance+expert validation=significant added market value, things will remain just as they are.


AND HE CONTINUES

I offered no solution:

Collectors are the problem here. Fortunately all collectors are subject to a packaging fetish that could, if a packaging solution for antiquities were properly concocted, more or less ensure the 'significant added market value' that I talk about. This might sound radical, even lunatic, but I propose that archaeological objects be laser-etched with tiny officially sanctioned signs or marks equivalent to the long established hallmarks applied to precious metals. This would mean the establishment of institutions to carry out the hallmarking, in every country that has problems with elicit antiquities trading, or, if the technology were cheap enough, even at regional level. An object that has been properly recorded is submitted along with its records, and most importantly photographs of unique identifying detail, the records and the object are tracked back, it gets its mark and goes out into the world as an elevated object, complete with its associated paper record, and even perhaps, officially boxed or packaged. It would take a little time but I'm sure that the collector would begin to appreciate the added significance and added investment value that packaging adds. Model train collectors, as I have recently learned, certainly do!

Museums used to practise a form of this with acquisition numbers painted onto the surface. I often wonder why this practise ceased because no right mined collector would ever scrape these marks off. An artefact once removed from the ground has become a new commodity, losing its status as purely roman and becoming instead Roman-Modern. It lives in another reality, our reality, and there is no problem with adding marks to it. For aesthetic reasons they need to be small, but there are no other considerations that should worry anyone.


Another day another WSI?

Forum members in the west midlands area may be interested to visit the public open day at our Wednesbury Forge excavations this weekend. The site will be open on Saturday 15th July from 10.00am until 4.00pm. The forge was in use from the sixteenth century until 2005, and was where Spear and Jackson made garden tools - many of which we all of course use day-to-day. The site is about two minutes' drive from Junction 9 of the M6.

More information about the site can be found in this leaflet.

Some recent pictures of the project, and directions to the site, can be found on our blog.

Are you tired of searching all over the internet for good archaeological images with provenance and copyright clearance?

The HEA Archaeology and the ADS are very pleased to announce the launch of the Archaeology Image Bank:

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/learning/image_bank/

This exciting new resource is a tool for locating and sharing
archaeological images for use in teaching, studying and research. There is no charge for using the Image Bank and users are also encouraged to donate their own archaeological images using the donation section of the web site's interface. There are already many hundreds of images
available for you to use with more being added all the time.

We hope you enjoy using this resource and that you will take the
opportunity to promote it amongst colleagues and to contribute your own best images to the bank for others to use.

ENJOY :face-approve:


Another day another WSI?

In our ever-expanding quest to improve life for archaeologists wishing to purchase tools, we are about to add a number of products to http://www.getatrowel.co.uk

We don't want to get this wrong though - you need the right gear!

If you could help with a little research we will endeavour to make our site more user friendly for you all.

PS text to buy coming very soon [8D]

Ian

http://www.getatrowel.co.uk - trowels for archaeological excavators

It has become relatively normal for excavations and evaluations to have fantastically accurate EDMs etc on site, but what of the watching brief? How do you measure in your results (whether positive or negative?). Ranging from bringing your own gps or EDM (or even borrowing a friendly site surveyors kit - done it many times), down to pacing (twitching eye...).

Of the Clan Sutton