Geographic Areas of Competence

[Paul Belford]

Just to correct a point of fact.

I think Peter may have confused me with someone else, because I am not sure how he has worked out our profit and loss. If we [u]had</u> made 1.8m last year then I would be laughing - as would my colleagues in other parts of our large and unwieldy organisation.

Ironbridge Archaeology is an archaeology unit which operates as part of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust. The figures for the Museum as a whole are to be found on the Charities Commission website. This shows that for 2005 the Museum [u]as a whole</u> made a surplus of 27,452 and in 2006 the Museum [u]as a whole</u> made a loss of 219,947 - in both cases on an overall turnover slightly over 3.5m. The archaeology unit is one small department of a Museum which also operates 10 visitor sites, an education department, conservation and curatorial services, maintenance (we have over 30 listed buildings and SAMs in our care) etc. etc.; the archaeological contribution has tended to average about 1/10 of the total turnover.

The Ironbridge Gorge Museum recieves no core funding from central or local government, and is entirely reliant for income on visitor admissions and other services (such as shop sales, archaeology, or corporate events) to support the work of the Trust.

In terms of the archaeology unit there is considerable difference in scale between ourselves and others. Thus the Oxford unit made a surplus of 277,095 in 2006 on a turnover of over 9m. Wessex made 423,093 on a turnover of around 7m.





Edited to remove weird formatting of pound signs.

[1man1desk]

Posted by Paul Belford:

quote:Without ANY regulation of the free market it is very difficult to pay for training...
... since we are usually in the position of offering a service that no-one actually wants, price is all.

Well, I work for an entirely commercial firm that regards staff training as crucual to its commercial success, and spends very large sums of money on it. Ultimately, archaeology is a skill-based activity. In the long term, a company that invests in training will both develop a more skilled workforce and be more likely to retain their best staff.

Price is definitely not all. My company also procures substantial quantities of archaeological work from units. We don't base our tender assessment purely on price, but on a combination of price and quality. On one recent occasion, we had a tender much cheaper than any other, but that did not give us the confidence that they could deliver to the required quality. We did not appoint that tenderer until we had talked through our worries with them, leading to a substantial increase in the resources they proposed to put in (and therefore their price, although they were still cheapest).



1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[diggingthedirt]

I do not disagree with anything that has been written so far in this thread by strong supporters of the market model. Like all service businesses, the biggest asset of archaeological companies is the staff. Successful businesses will recognise this, and see that they are also buyers in an internal market where the best staff can choose who they work for. Keeping these people happy, well paid, motivated and interested will give the business a competitive edge. A structured approach to staff training will pay a dividend on investment, and being nice to staff stops the investment walking out of the door!

I am a believer, and recognise the vast gains that have been made by commercial sector archaeology, but I do not have an unquestioned zeal for the market. The market principles that govern archaeology are different to law or other services with professional monopolies. The archaeological market is an artificial creation, with buyers purchasing a service that enables them to discharge planning conditions. The product (archive, reports and final publication) is something buyers must share with the state. They do not have exclusive control of this, and there is no market logic to drive the quality of the product #8211; which is why regulatory mechanisms, howsoever they may be conceived, need to be deployed by the state to control quality. As I have already mentioned, this is administered in Ireland by controlling access to the market with a license system.

I welcome regulatory mechanisms because I believe that if society wants to achieve something for the common good then this is as much a public task as a commercial endeavour. I distinguish between quality management of archaeology (managing a program of archaeological work on time and budget) with quality archaeology (generating new secure knowledge of the past). The two things are far from mutually exclusive, but we should recognise that it is entirely possible for an archaeological company to trade on an exceptional reputation in the construction industry while producing consistently substandard results for the archaeological community. We are currently generating vast swathes of information, but not realising the potential of that data as knowledge about the past. I am objecting to the Fordist principle of finding a model that works and selling lots and lots and lots. Archaeology deals in uncertainties, and is far too important to be left in the hands of the bean counters who would have us believe otherwise.

[Steven]

Hi
Brilliant post diggingthedirt!

PPG16 has lead to funding tied directly into projects rather than trying to allocate funds from a central source with inherent problems such as never knowing if a more significant site will come up just after you've allocated all you budget. What PPG16 doesn't do is involve directly those who's role it is to integrate new sites/knowledge into existing models. I mean of course academics. However, I have seen maybe four or five visits for professional academics (as opposed to students) into the HER over almost ten years (and those represent two people). After talking to students from a local university about their lecturer who teaches them about a certain towns development, it is clear that he is completely unaware of all the evaluations, excavations and watching briefs which have "disproved" many of his accepted ideas about the town. These PPG16 projects have provided new information (a Roman component not recognised before) and showed that the Saxon town isn't where he says it is.

This lecture even takes students on a tour of this town as he outlines his theories and "evidence". One visit to the HER is all it would take for him to talk sense (and probably get another book/paper out of it).

It strikes me that despite Richard Bradley's warning about academics being so far behind PPG16 archaeology, most don't want to learn. I firmly believe that it is the academics role to synthesise all our information after all PPG16 is not designed to do that.

Steven