CBA Community Archaeology Report

[Unitof1]

I tried reading the report, this sentance made me laugh,

The concept of ?community archaeology? is not new (and see Liddle, in prep., for discussion of its development in Leicestershire in the 1970s).

I noticed that the report was put together by somebody called the CASO and presume that is the Dr http://www.britarch.ac.uk/caf/wikka.php?wakka=CommunityArchaeologySupportOfficer acknowledged on the front cover?.and funded by the Headly Trust. The trail starts here??.follow the money got this far before getting vertigo http://www.sfct.org.uk/headley.html. So the report is not by the CBA its by a trust which has its own agendas?some of which appear to have specific religious bias and amongst others.

[SIZE=3]But is it fair, as commercial archaeology has to do as presently organised, that a unit, say Oxford, digs a site in, say, Dorset and then buggers off taking all the information and finds with them. I know that they did some community liaison, but once again local people did not have a chance to connect with their past, as located in their area.Whats in a a name and community archaeology.
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Somewhere at the back of the cave there is OXFORD ARCHAEOLOGY LIMITED

But like the trade names of the ifa it was and is

OXFORDARCHAEOLOGICAL UNIT LIMITED (Old Name )
OXFORD ARCHAEOLOGICAL UNIT LIMITED (Old Name )
OXFORD ARCHAEOLOGY (Working Name )
OXFORD ARCHAEOLOGY NORTH (Working Name )

And its charitable objectives are

TO ADVANCE EDUCATION IN THE SUBJECT OF ARCHAEOLOGY FOR THE PUBLIC BENEFIT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND ELSEWHERE IN THE WORLD

They dropped the original benefit to oxford bit about two years ago I think and went global to cover all bases like dorset (although the said unit hangs out in the oxford county council pension fund-I honestly don?t want to say that again). Not sure who it pays rent to.

The unit I imagine, with the full backing of the ifa, they have the ROA bits covered, would say they have the community of Dorset covered and that you need not worry yourself.

[SIZE=3]That is why, Unitof1, CAs need to be watched over and abide by a code of practice that is tailored to their work and needs, as are RAOs. Units employ IfA members because it is supposed to guarantee a certain standard of work/experience in the employee as defined by the IfA, so why not CAs too?
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Possibly Comarch you might come to find that the exploitation of the ifa has you stitched up as much any field archaeologist by higher established authorities and probably half your battle is a similar one to archaeological field workers: that the ifa is really designed for organisations mostly which already have governmental/civil service subsidy or statutory authority. Basically comarch your are competing with the CBA, the charity units, all the established quangos and trusts, the academics for a little piece of the archaeology action??.based on the concept of archaeological field skills.

[Kel]

I've only worked with one commercial unit so far, but it couldn't wait to shift finds and associated paper archives back to its county of origin as soon as possible. Storage costs money. Once the unit had fulfilled its contractual obligations with regard to analysis and reporting, it was desperate to send the material back to the community from whence it originated as that's when the funding stopped. That unit don't seem keen to keep archives to themselves and away from the local community - quite the opposite. The problem was in finding a community that actually wanted it back. That process can take years. There are museums and archive services which won't accept any more archives from units, due to lack of space and funding.

In the example quoted, I highly doubt that Oxford Archaeology will want to hold onto the Dorset finds (assume that's the Dorchester Relief Road work?) just for the sake of it, especially as there won't be a budget to pay for this beyond anything specified in their contract. That will be heading back to Dorchester at some point (if they can accept it), to do with as they see fit and involve the community if they choose to. And that'll be nothing to do with the unit that excavated/documented the material.

If a commercial contract doesn't include a provision for involvement of the local community, who should be expected to fund this? Should this be something else included as standard in developer contracts?

[Kel]

I don't think anyone made a profit from my work experience - I was working on projects for which budgets had been exhausted and I needed training/mentoring that took staff away from their funded work. In purely financial terms, I must have cost them more than I contributed.

[RedEarth]

what Unit is trying to point out is a major piece of sleight of hand at the heart of archaeology; big commercial companies, making a profit, whilst presenting the appearance of being philanthropic societies caring for our heritage.
pretty much in the same way as Burger King could be said to be 'looking after' all those big sad-eyed moo-cows.

i think he has a valid point; are these organisations charitable trusts, or are they commercial organisations? if they're outreach organisations, all well and good, but i notice that YAT are advertising for business development managers, preumably to help them expand beyond their traditional boundaries. not the activity you'd expect from a bunch of woolly-jumpered educational types, surely?

let's put it like this, if i were running a big engineering company, say, i'd be overjoyed if i could register as a charity and get work-experience 'volunteers' to come in on a regular basis and do a bit of welding or whatever; in the interests of 'outreach', obviously, and any profit they made for me would be entirely incidental...

Except that I suspect that what would actually happen is that, rather than making a profit (additional or otherwise) off the back of these volunteer welders the whole profession would be devalued and so making a profit would be harder than ever, which it seems to me is what is happening in archaeology. Everything has become geared around undercutting, saving money, and agressive expansion by those that can manage it. Like you say, such behaviour is to be expected of purely commercial organisations, but educational charities whose remit used to state that they were exploring the archaeology of one particularly area? Surely some mistake.

Getting back to the topic a little - an archaeological educational charitry should surely be exactly the sort of entity that could be applying for HLF money itself purely for the reason of establishing professional training. of course, doing that while competatively tendering at the same time and potentially training staff from rival companies might be a bit difficult.

[Comarch]

If a commercial contract doesn't include a provision for involvement of the local community, who should be expected to fund this? Should this be something else included as standard in developer contracts?[/QUOTE]

Yes.

[RedEarth]

If a commercial contract doesn't include a provision for involvement of the local community, who should be expected to fund this? Should this be something else included as standard in developer contracts?

Yes.[/QUOTE]

You're probably right Comarch, but my concern, when this topic was brought up some time ago, was how on earth you cost into a project community involvement given how amorphous its definition is? Of course, at the time I was shouted down as if I was some sort of mean and precious archaeologist worrying about the public poking their noses in, which really wasn't what I was getting at. Again, this is surely the sort of thing an educational charity should be dealing with in its sleep!

[Unitof1]

but first you should cost the archaeology

theres more sleight of hand to it as well, to my mind the biggy:

Community archaeologists trying to get some ifa archaeology code action are part of the concept that archaeology belongs to the public. The problem with this is when the public want something that has a bit of archaeology in its way, which is basically most of the schemes which have compulsory purchase powers

Oh look we have managed to get a ring road scheme into the addenda
Where were we archaeologists when

http://frontpage.woodland-trust.org.uk/woodsunderthreat/case-studies/weymouth.htm

in this stitch up there were original owner who owned this archaeology

http://www.dorsetforyou.com/390745

how were the original landowners advised. Did anybody say to them oh by the way us archaeologists are about to rip you off right royally because we are the developers archaeologist and curators. Did any archaeologist community particularly say to the landowner in their community what you have got there is worth a lot of money.

[Unitof1]

you want to be in this community

http://www.rpsgroup.com/Group/News/August-2009.aspx

You will need this

http://www.rpsgroup.com/Group/Specialist-Capabilities/H/Historic-Environment-and-Archaeology.aspx

Working with specialist suppliers, as necessary, we custom build teams to satisfy the demands of each project, with the ability to respond rapidly and flexibly to the statutory requirements of our clients. Our ethos is to provide a client-based service whilst addressing the cultural heritage requirements of each project. Individual corporate membership of the Institute for Archaeologists provides professional accreditation of our skills.

[Dinosaur]

To throw a slight spanner in all this, what happens on commercially confidential projects (which covers an awful lot of the consultancy work we do), would 'community participants' have to have their memories wiped afterwards?

[Unitof1]

care to give theoretical scenario of this spanner