So m'dears.... after 6 years, BAJR has now made it to the lofty heights of the place to put adverts... and boy if you knew the phone calls, the prodding, the requests and cajouling that goes on behind the scenes... (yeah I know I miss the odd dodgy advert [:I] )

Anyway, after nearly 1500 adverts BAJR now places adverts for over 100 companies, and all have to adhere to the pay scales..(sometimes its the best deal I can get - sometimes I still say no... hey... I would rather lose an advert than put up one that falls below)


Now its up to you....

I want to know (offlist !!! Email me here if there are companies that pay less than the minimums...(and yes I want dates, job title, responsibility expected)

REMEMBER ...OFFLIST!! I want NO NAMES on these pages.

I also want to ask people to seriously consider - If I work for a company that pays below... I am perpetuating these wage levels... If I refuse to work for anything less than minum - then I am supporting BAJR... supporting the IFA... and making sure we ALL get the chance to have payscales that we deserve...

Think about it... BAJR has been doing what it can for years now...but I am only one person - what can you do??? :face-huh:








Another day another WSI?

I was just browsing in the paper, and found an ad for county archaeologist, biggish county down south. I was really surprised at how little experience they were asking for: "four years' working experience of archaeology in the public, private or voluntary sectors".

Four years! Not enough to make supervisor in most places. I appreciate that most applicants will have more than four years experience, particularly as it mentions "a good knowledge of government and planning procedures"

But this is big money, why can't they ask for eight or ten years?
Why are they even mentioning the voluntary sector, I can't imagine you'd learn any useful skills there. Also, no mention of IFA membership, which you'd think would be valued at this level.

Sorry about the rant, and I mean nothing personally against curator types. I just wonder who comes up with these job adverts, and whether they are really looking for the best candidates.

I have mentioned the subject of 'contemporary archaeology' on this site before. We at Ironbridge are now involved with a specific contemporary archaeology project, the archaeological 'excavation' of the old archaeology transit van. The details of this project (along with some of our own comments about its usefulness) can be found on our contemporary archaeology blog.

I would be very interested in your responses to this project. Before you respond please have a look at the Draft Project Design which is now available on the Ironbridge website. So, the question is...

How worthwhile is the project to 'excavate' the archaeology van?

You should now all have the ability to create a poll.

click NEW poll, once I have checked to see if it is clean and proper.. your poll will be up....

Another day another WSI?

Just a quickie relating to recent developments where some are forced to work wearing "safety" glasses. A swift cast over the relevent documentation supplied with them makes it clear that:
1. When scratched-they MUST be replaced and,
2. Those of you who wear prescription glasses should under no circumstances wear safety glasses OVER your prescription glasses.Your "safety" glasses must therefore be prescription standard or not at all.

Therefore, when scratched, replace them regularly and-insist upon prescription standard "safety" glasses.

..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)

Wanted- a good artist. A few years ago, a certain institute had a picture published that a few of us found rather entertaining.The image showed three trowels...the largest of which had a label attached saying
PIFA, a partially worn one with a label saying AIFA and the smallest trowel sported a label declaring MIFA. I`m after an artist who could reproduce said picture but in reverse order-i.e, MIFA trowel being the largest etc.....have a t-shirt idea.....

..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)

Have just had two very similar conversations with two ecologists regarding alterations to Listed Buildings.

Without wishing to make it too site specific, the question revolved around the issue of whether alterations could be made to make a Listed Building either more suitable or create an environment which might encourage wildlife use. The structures currently have little or no use in one case. The question of initial damge may be quite easily overcome (for some bats access points can be made by the removal of 2-3cm sections of mortar) so I am fairly comfortable with at least explaining that the effect on the outside of the structure will be minimal and visually almost neutral. What I am less certain about is the measure of long term impact of bats or birds on the building itself. Has anyone received LBC application covering something like this (would a maintainance plan by best produced?) or would curators see this as generally outside the bounds of LBC?

Of the Clan Sutton

There seems to be a new fad.Some units seem to be quite happy to go hunting for features through 20-odd cms of overburden rather than open the site up properly.I understand that this approach would be rewarding in a budgetry sense but, I do hope that this is not going to become the norm...tiz nauseating particularly as two recent examples of this were sanctioned/dictated by consultants and was completely overlooked by curators.Whats going on?[?]

..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)

Some time ago, we established that the only people that could be held accountable (legally/democratically) for their actions in archaeology are the Curators.We have also agreed (round one...) that Consultants work in their clients best interests.

1. What mechanisms are already in place whereby tax-paying voters can examine and criticise the actions of Curators?
2. What checks and balances are in place to mitigate against the imposition of the will of consultants over spineless Curators and unit Managers?


..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)

Have just received new copy of The Archaeologist.

Mr Hosty, nice picture page 2 (alas not page 3)! Are you about to jump on them???

ML