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+--- Thread: The future for RAE's (/showthread.php?tid=3040)
The future for RAE's - Austin Ainsworth - 29th April 2010
YellowMike Wrote:austin
the thread rather than the intellegabiltity of subsequent threads please.
lets not loose touch before the start
I would reply to the substance of the thread but it has been written in such an impenetrable manner that it is impossible to do so.
Friendly warning: Make your posts less obtuse or I'll start deleting them.
The future for RAE's - YellowMike - 29th April 2010
can we return to topic please?
:face-topic:
The future for RAE's - Oxbeast - 29th April 2010
What is the topic? YOu seem to post these thread about every couple of months. I gave up on reading them sometime last year. They never make any sense. I hope your records are written in something closer to English.
The future for RAE's - YellowMike - 29th April 2010
AUP states that the deletion of messages is the last resort there is no last resort in this mention by the moderator.
there is now a debate goining on about a subject i raised when people should discuss it. but rather the whole post was deleted and now we have a 5 page dialogue on the past tense given that the code of conduct has been voted on and changed.
This is not constructive
how do my records have any relevance to this thread? this is professional derision and just rediculous
what is so complicated about Research Assement Exercises
do we just sit here and talk about what we want and occassionally think about the thread remaining on topic?
now :face-topic:
The future for RAE's - Comarch - 29th April 2010
Ok, let's take it that community involvement is the thread, shall we? The first important piece in this jigsaw is trained community archaeologists. Archaeology in the field is still amateur (come on guys, you know this is the case) - taking professionalism to equate to having a career structure for all and being trained for and during that career and being constantly reviewed. I was in the field for nearly 20 years and never had a days training, despite asking until blue in the face. All skills were learned on the job, unless you wanted to specialise and your face fitted. This is not how a profession is run, in any sector. The buildings sector see archaeologists as as a joke and a nuisance, from management to digger. They are professionals dealing with amateurs. With community archaeology we need to start as we mean to go on. I am trying to work as a community archaeologist and would love to have some structured training program, as I wish I had had in the field. I will leave it to others to list all the skills needed for the job. Who is to provide the training, for CAs & future diggers? As in the field this needs to be taken out of the hands of the units but supported by them. How about the IfA, with a means tested tax on all registered units? If we are to serve the public to the best of our ability we need trained, professional community archaeologists, reviewed by the IfA (as with units) so that we do not make the same mistake as we did in the field and have a 'profession' growing out of a purely academic and amateur subject. The public will respect the people working in this field of archaeology and without that any pontificating about instilling a 'sense of place' and 'community identity' will be cast on stony ground.
The future for RAE's - YellowMike - 29th April 2010
Local or community archaeology is most certainly a key issue that underpins the RAE.
Archaeology specifically, from my measure of inexperience, certainly has a long way to go in the development of this area. Management and direction will be very challenging, whilst integrating all the stakeholders into any given project. This will particularly be the case, when it comes down to ensuring the future of this area does not fall into a back footed response to any given immediate demand.
The integration of community archaeology into a commercial development project would be a very difficult project, which to be honest would be more by opportunity than design, but this will require a significant momentum and research into the potential areas that will tick the boxes for any given involvement.
As for training this will very much come down to the commitment of any stakeholders to any given project design and that will be reflected in the focus and direction placed upon it by any given leadership.
And let’s face it whomever leads these projects will be directing them for the gain of specific stakeholders and will be highly political in nature.
This will not be simple and will involve highly complex issues and probably in some cases could take years to initiate, and thus commitment will have to be taken into consideration of the realistic projects and their design parameters.
If the IFA is of the mind that the industry is self-regulated then in the short to midterm that will not change and thus would mean that initiation of projects will have to move forward without that kind of formalised support.
So now we must turn to the issue of employment.
If there is no funding from any existing bodies to initiate or support project design, then it’s going to be heavily dependent on voluntary additional work outside of the working week.
This may seem natural to the industry, but if a demand is suddenly placed upon the industry, the funding infrastructure is just not there to support it outside of any given employer whilst additionally trying to get your paid job done.
There is no doubt we must begin to identify the real work that will be involved in any formulation of projects, let alone the risk of non-initiation.
it is true however that pontification will for nought, but mostly upon the basis that we continue to keep our heads buried in the sand and expecting some other direction from government, local authorities, curators, employers and other heritage NGO's.
This lack of direction and lack of a professionalization for the role of community project initiation will severely hold back any development in a clear development that will be able to provide for the investing stakeholders.
We must remember, however that these stakeholders are not anything or anyone new. These people are the very people we work and deal with on a regular basis now, the only difference is the manner and level of prioritisation given over to any of these people based upon a demand for the involvement of the very public, and for whom we have been working all these years.
The future for RAE's - Comarch - 29th April 2010
Err...yep. I don't think that many commercial archaeology units will be willing to invest in CA as part of their contracts with developers. Some are trying to incorporate some element of public inclusion in their dealings with the building industry (where most work is to be had) but not any I can think of outside of the large units - MoLA, Oxford, Wessex. Even then it tends to be just one or two weeks per year given over to 'good works' and smacks of charity, rather than archaeology taking public involvement seriously, with dedicated CA professionals within 'the job' full or part time. Please. please avoid any mention of trying to do this with volunteers, either paid staff in their spare time or retired field archaeologists. Working with the public is too important and CAs must be paid as CAs and be tied into archaeology just as field staff are. How to insentivise units to do this work? Ideas anyone? Perhaps units should bring in CAs as an when they are doing Com. Arch. projects rather than give it to already overworked diggers (this happens all the time). They must budget for the projects they are already doing... so pay a trained CA.
The IfA must give this area support, by making CA an important part of their grading structure (people running large projects to be AIFA & MIFA grade for example). Funding - Jeez, I have no definitive answer to that. How about a mix of self-employed CAs and employed, where posts can be created (full or part-time).
As regards research - we do not have the time. This work needs to be done now so that the public continue to support heritage projects and see it as relevant to their lives.
The future for RAE's - YellowMike - 29th April 2010
im assuming CA is community archaeology and not Cotswold Archaeology
The future for RAE's - YellowMike - 29th April 2010
what is the difference between community archaeologist (paid) and a council paid archaeologist?
where is the difference in roles of a community archaeologist and a digging archaeologist in terms of being brought in for specific contracts or projects?
What is the role of the public and or community within a project (excluding amateur as pre defined)?
I think the exclusion of a sector of the industry due to lack of time is probably alittle shortsighted, even if this is not to their greatest benefit.
What are the projects in place now that requires immediate action?
A graded membership is a good idea, but this will require specifics to identify grading requirements.
as for funding of posts, what will those roles entail, within pre-existing organisational structures?
The future for RAE's - trainedchimp - 29th April 2010
I'm struggling with this one a bit. The title is all about the RAE, which no longer exists, and is now the research excellence framework (REF). This basically relate to University teaching and research, which means that they are utterly irrelevnat to non-university based units, whether they are in local governmnet or not. Even within the university units, if the department doesn't want to enter the work of that unit for the REF, which it probabaly wouldn't as by definition most commercial work is only on sites of local or regional importance, and international is about the only level of significance that the REF will look at unless you're a classicist (but that's a different whinge), then it doesn't matter. As we've seen with GUARD, it seems to be too easy to see a commercial unit as a revenue-generating arm (and is often how these things are sold to archaeology departments IME, no names etc), and not as something that can actually have an impact on the research life of the department.
True, you could argue that community archaeology has an 'impact', which is true, but most of the commentators (Overy in the latest THE) are looking at influence on public policy, industry standards or professional (in this context, academic) practice. In the way of the blairite university world some of us move in, engaging the public probably isn't going to count for much unless you've got a pretty exceptional project that's run in an 'big' way and 'impacts' beyond the local community (thinking of Hungate, but not much else in the UK springs to mind), or you make such a success of a project locally it becomes an exemplar for wider practice. Even then, it doesn't count unless you're doing it for a university. This isn't to say that community archaeology isn't worthwhile - it is and it's something we should be doing a lot more, it's all being done in the name of the British public, so they deserve to see some benefit from it- just that most of it probably won't count for all that much as 'impact' in the REF, and that the REF for most of us (me with my plastic hat on) is a total irrelevance.
What I suppose is important is that those of us who work in commercial practice get on and start doing stuff that's genuinely innnovative and allows us to drive research- for the last 20-30 years at least, all of the interesting 'new' discoveries in my field have come from professional fieldwork, not academic research excavations, so we need to make the most of the opportunities we get, to start impacting on the academic world, and not being patronised over the use of 'grey' literature, lack of publication,production of bad TV series etc...
Apologies for the incoherent rant
:o)