The latest edition of Rescue News, produced by Rescue - The British Archaeological Trust, has just been published and as something of a 'special offer' we are making copies available to non-members at £2.00 each (inclusive of postage).

This edition (number 99) contains (amongst other things) articles arising from our AGM / Open Meeting (held in March) on the theme of 'Archaeology and Consultancy', a 'full and frank' account of the problems of trying to run a local museum under present conditions, an article by David Connolly on his work in Nokalakevi in Georgia and a response to Paul Barford's article in edition 98 (also available for £2.00) on the Portable Antiquities Scheme by Roger Bland.

If you would like to order a copy of Rescue News, please write to us
(enclosing a cheque) at:

RESCUE - The British Archaeological Trust
15A Bull Plain
Hertford
SG14 1DX

Full copies of Rescue's recent responses to government and English Heritage consultation papers and discussion documents can be found on our website (http://www.rescue-archaeology.freeserve.co.uk) along with details of membership. The website also contains a list of the contents of recent issues of Rescue News. Subject to availability, copies of these are available for £2.00.


If you would like to support the rights and preservation of our non-renewable archaeological heritage, please join RESCUE, the British Archaeological Trust, today.

http://www.rescue-archaeology.freeserve.co.uk/

Am I alone in being slightly perplexed about the BM job advert on BAJR?
21-24k/ year for a fairly high profile job with a fair deal of responsibility in such a prestigious institution sounds a bit low to me.
Its definitely less than junior lecturers in unis get these days (even without the current talk on pay rises) and its based in London, so one can take off 2k off the salary anyway.

Should the BM and institutions like it not be a beacon for offering decent pay for decent skills in the discipline?

Apart from that...since when does 'early' prehistory start 2,500 BC???
Has the BM thrown out their lower, middle and upper Palaeolithic, mesolithic and Neolithic collections?

I notice that the current job ad on BAJR for West Yorkshire mentions that a lunch allowance is paid. Nice perk. But set me wondering what the general situation is these days regarding site tea and coffee.

Do you get it free or do you have a kitty? Does it extend to bottled water in summer or cupasoup in winter? And how about the ice-cream perk in hot weather, cakes on Friday/birthdays etc.

Where I am currently working we have to buy our own tea and coffee but we do get a generous daily subsistence rate. There is a tradition however that any visitor to a site brings some kind of comestible gift, be it chocolate, jelly babies or biscuits. I have only known one person in UK archaeology to do the biscuit thing on a regular basis however (and many Lincolnshire archies are very grateful!!)

I'm thinking that this might be something that advertisers might like to mention on their BAJR ads. A small thing, but first impressions of a potential employer could be all important.


Utterly gutted by the footy by the way....

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Another day another WSI?

Do you think archaeology should be licenced?

Its a tricky one.... but the choice is yours... trusted archaeologists or anyone can have a go.. you decide.

Another day another WSI?

I thought I would apologise the archaeology community about the fact that I am fairly grumpy this week.

I am trying to buy a new computer from Dell and it is not the most pleasurable experience. I have a blog running on the Dell bulletin board under the name Dell Rage - and I have the name wotnocomputer

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/...rue#M80240

What I would like to share with BAJR is the fact that they have taken UKP 250 off the price of the same computer so far. So if you are having dell hassles ask them for compensation

Dr Peter

How does archeology police its own if you have a bad apple amongst your ranks. What systems are in place to deal with such things and what discipline is brought to bare.



http://www.ukdfd.co.uk
Recording OUR heritage for future generations.

We're trying to come up with a definition of a "phase".

So far, we're going with a phase being roughly the period of construction, use and abandonment of a feature/set of associated features/etc.

Does anyone have any other definition of a phase?

Love the format of the new BAJR Poll abd great to have it back

Latest poll has left me abit [?] Is the project for real?? I know they say there is no funding, but surely people's valuable time could be directed in a more productive way? They do have funding from the AA (according to blog).

Who are these people? Dr Scolfield? Are they archaeologists, accountants, vets?

Has there been a suitable project design written stating research objectives, methodologies etc??

At a time when archaeology is being plucked into the 21st c. airy fairy ideas like this promote the image of an eccentric, rambling profession..

As its Friday evening and I’m still working here is something a bit controversial.

It seems to me that the four sides of archaeology:- consultants (the darkside), curators, contractor’s management, and site workers are constantly bickering, critical of the others and always blaming them when things go wrong.

The thread on machining contained some rare honesty about a common situation – a bad machine driver. Anybody who has done a lot of machine watching will know there are good and bad drivers from our point of view. Machine drivers can turn around and say this is a load of XXXXXX rubbish and dig out a load of archaeological remains.

The worst case I know resulted in a digger having her legs broken in several places. (All H&S procedures followed, the driver was simply incompetent and was prosecuted).

Would we not do better as an industry to accept that we don’t live in a perfect world identify the issues and seek as an industry to solve them. The problem of bad machine drivers can be solved by having archaeologists drive the machines themselves for example.

Surely what we need to know is, are these things isolated incidents, pragmatic responses to particular situations, common place or industry wide practices.

Peter Wardle