Dinosaur Wrote:I'm reasonably certain I can remember cases in the past where Local Societies etc have, in fact, undertaken what would conventionally be regarded in this day and age as 'commercial' jobs - in fact any right-minded developer with a plot of land likely to contain archaeology and in no particular hurry to develop (all those land-bank sites that Tesco and co sit on, for starters) wouldn't be going far wrong in approaching any local societies to see if they can get all the archaeology out of the way in advance of any planning process for free/peanuts (or Unitof1's plan B, bulldoze it). Wouldn't that potentially have a significant effect upon the commercial archaeology sector? :face-stir:

Comarch Wrote:A Chicken & Egg question = which came first, the funding or the interest? Come on! "Oh look. Some money. I've never had any interest in archaeology before, lets go dig some holes". Could anyone please give me an example where a community project took funds from a commercial job. Do you really believe that if all community archaeology stopped tomorrow that there would be a shed load of money put into training professionals? Why is it a fact that 15-20 years ago, when Community Archaeology did not exist as a concept, that a structured training program was never seen outside university (10 days at UCL! Big deal).
I will say this again - training professionals and letting people learn how archaeology is done are two clear separate things. We are all angry about the lack of investment in the workforce, so join a union or the Diggers Forum or spark a revolution and do something about it. CA is not the enemy. I'm not sure anyone is but if you want a professional structure in archaeology which parallels other professions we are all going to have to look at how we want archaeology to change in the future.
Preservation in situ - fine. But are we then to ban all research? Is it all going to be rescue from now on? Also most CA projects are non-intrusive. Digging - CA sites do not have to be done on sensitive archaeology. As I said, a lot can be learned from modern sites - its how to dig not what you dig for most people. If they are on a site with, say, Roman archaeology this has probably been run for years by a group of professionals as a distinct project. All this is so small as to be a pimple on the body of archaeology.
Hands up all those who have been uneasy on a site that has been rushed through... Be honest! I have seen some really dodgy stuff in my time.
Do you know anyone who thinks archaeology is "just a job"? Go and work somewhere else.
Ownership again. Why not? It was said earlier that units want to get rid of artifacts because they don't want the cost of storage, and send it back to local museums. "we dug it up now its your problem - we don't own it". You can't have it both ways. And yes, anyone should be able to 'do' archaeology. But they can't do commercial archaeology because it is done in particular circumstances - they can't come on a site as it would be trespass. In the past MSC people went on to do commercial archaeology and you have probably worked with them. So what? 99.9% did not. Only professional archaeologists can do a professional job in commercial archaeology, so don't worry, your safe.
Archaeology is not a masonic, secret society, with secret rituals and esoteric knowledge. I see this attitude as a result of archaeology being a young profession. It has little confidence in its own image as a job. You will not be asked to "hand over" your identity. You own your skills, you own your right to do a professional job, and nothing can take that away from you.

Sith Wrote:(My bold)

I'm sure we can have this debate without being too patronising to the interested outsiders.

RedEarth Wrote:S'funny, because I thought the inexperienced telling the experienced that their job was easy after a few weeks practice was patronising. Guess I was wrong. Isn't the term 'interested outsiders' slightly patronising, after all, we are not the masons or a secret sect.

Quote:I am not eligble to join and union or join the diggers' forum. I have tried to make things better from where I am, but you can't do it unilaterally. Like nuclear weapons, if you decide to do the right thing it doesn't mean you won't get wiped out by those that don't.

Sith Wrote:I don't disagree that some developers could take advantage of community archaeologists in this way, however, they might find themselves falling foul of PPS5 when they come to applying for permission to develop at a later date.

Unless they have consulted the CM and worked to an agreed brief/WSI then they could find themselves in the clarts. For starters, perservation in situ or avoidance of 'substantial harm' is the watch word and preservation by record is no longer an automatically acceptable default position. So if you've preserved it by record without talking to the CM... standby for incoming.

BAJR Wrote:there seems to be a vein in this thread about job protection based on assumptions and wild guesses with no examples of the could happen ever happening. surely com arch is the basis for archaeology support. if you want to be a temporal contamination engineer and stop pretending the archaeology is the most important thing. for me... its archaeology first.