Bad for Archaeology - Good for Archaeologists - Discuss

[BAJR]

Bad for archaeology but good for archaeologists ? this is a paradox. David Petts is concerned for the environment and does not want to see the damage wrought by the road building schemes, but has many friends and colleagues who work in the commercial sector and for whom these kind of projects mean jobs. Which should take priority?

http://outlandish-knight.blogspot.fr/201...roads.html

[Dinosaur]

Archaeology seems to moving more and more towards extensive non-intrusive surveys (AP plotting, lidar, landscape characterisation etc) - trashing a strip of landscape occasionally (with attendant excavation and recording of course) is the only way of 'calibrating' such work - a surprising amount of which often turns out to either not show the half of it or, quite often, is just plain wrong (at least at an interpretational level). Am currently writing up a similar long linear infrastructure project 'benefitting' from a wide range of non-excavated evidence (and done plenty of others), so can speak with some authority :0:face-stir:

[kevin wooldridge]

http://outlandish-knight.blogspot.fr/201...roads.html

I'm getting a warning that connecting to this website may result in downloading a virus.....is it possible that the text could be extracted and reposted via a safe connection?

[barkingdigger]

Hmmm. No warnings on my browser, but not sure if it is ok to copy & paste here without permission...

The gist of his blog is that some "shelved" road schemes are being resurrected, and that there is a question about wanting to preserve the evidence in-situ versus getting jobs for the troops. No actual scheme locations are mentioned (sadly), and his main point is that commercial archaeology is just another sub-contractor to the construction industry so what is good for the builders is financially good for diggers. However, he does set it as "...and now discuss" because obviously there will be folks on both sides of the argument!

The real (and unwritten) issue is whether we trust the whole current planning system to properly investigate and recover the full evidence from the path of such big schemes, given the stories we all can tell of flawed WSIs, poorly designed briefs, inadequate evaluations, etc. Maybe we need to fully strip & clean back the whole footprint of the road corridor before the Planning Condition can be discharged?... :face-stir:

[BAJR]

Am also pretty protected to the hilt... aqnd have got no warnings... but some people have had virus warning.




I will ask...

[Dinosaur]

The real (and unwritten) issue is whether we trust the whole current planning system to properly investigate and recover the full evidence from the path of such big schemes, given the stories we all can tell of flawed WSIs, poorly designed briefs, inadequate evaluations, etc. Maybe we need to fully strip & clean back the whole footprint of the road corridor before the Planning Condition can be discharged?... :face-stir:

Too late for some recent motorway schemes :face-crying:

[Carrickavoy]

Over-reliance on large building projects will not help archaeology restructure itself as a profession. It will only put off the inevitable for a few months, years maybe. In Ireland where a similar coupling went unquestioned, and in fact was supported by government policies that encouraged road building and massive green filed housing estates, there is massive structural unemployment within archaeology now. The archaeology sector did not diversity into other areas, indeed there was no reason to as the immediate rewards were so high. In hindsight it would have been better to have tried to future proof some sections of the sector so that at least some jobs could have been saved.

Also the ConDems are only pouring money into roads, they are not putting money into other building programmes that could also create jobs either through excavation, EIS and built heritage renovation etc. I was reading this earlier today and it was pretty worrying about the path that UK archaeology is taking as a result of government policy http://heritagebusinessjournal.com/2012/...chaeology/

[kevin wooldridge]

Am also pretty protected to the hilt... aqnd have got no warnings... but some people have had virus warning. I will ask...

The problem may be with some associated malware the blogger has on their system. Normally my virus protection would deal with this as a matter of course. It seems unusual that I have received a specific warning about this site.....

[david.petts]

I'm getting a warning that connecting to this website may result in downloading a virus.....is it possible that the text could be extracted and reposted via a safe connection?

Yes, sorry, it was actually some problem with another blog I'd linked to on the page; I've removed the link now, so it should be ok.

cheers
David

[BAJR]

And with grateful thanks David

Honestly, you write a blog post and then before you know it, six months have passed and it’s time to write another! Couple of things caught my eye recently- most recently was the government announcing plans to revive a series of road building schemes that had been shelved, seemingly funded somehow by a combination of local authorities and commercial capital (because that kind of thing has worked SO well in the past….

This seems to be part of some kind of on-going CONDEM campaign to cause chaos in local authority planning departments. Combined with HS2 and the fantastic policy of kick-starting the economy by allowing people to build slightly bigger conservatories, this is yet another policy seemingly intended to cause immense levels of contention at local planning level.

It is tempting to suggest, only partially tongue in cheek, that the idea is to cause massive problems in local government planning so that they then have a strong argument for removing planning from local authority control and centralising it in Whitehall.

I did rather depressingly hear a Tory MP on Any Questions the other week talking about placing under-performing planning departments into ‘special measures’; exactly the same term used to for ‘underperforming’ schools which are now forced out of local education authority control and into ‘academy’ status, with a line of accountability that runs straight from school to ‘sponsor’ to Whitehall- conveniently cutting out all those tiresome local authority people and democratically elected councillors. As I understand it, this policy of hacking away at local authorities and replacing them with Whitehall is called ‘localism’.

Anyhow, as an archaeologist, my hackles tend to rise and this kind of thing. On the whole, I tend to prefer not to see archaeological sites, historic landscapes, listed buildings etc destroyed – sorry, I’m just a bit funny like that. Indeed, another recent article in the paper that caught my eye was one that highlighted that 20 years have elapsed since the Twyford Down protests. This was the first of a series of environmental protests that kicked off in the early 1990s.

The one that I saw up-close was the anti-Newbury bypass campaign- which saw the emergence of Archaeologist and Development as a pressure group.

I well remember attending a rally at the site organised by the group. The trouble is, and very few archaeologists I think admit this, is that whatever the pros and cons of road construction (both in environmental terms and as an act of Keynesian economic stimulus), archaeology is just another subcontractor of the construction industry. Due to the way in which archaeologist sits within the planning system, we have a commercial archaeological sector that exists to fulfil the developers legal obligations to meet concerns about the threat to archaeological deposits. Commercial fieldwork units competitively tender for work and derive most, or more usually all, of their income from such contracts.

We’ve seen this very clearly in recent years; the recession led to a collapse in construction and a consequent collapse in commercial archaeology, with extensive lay-offs and many businesses going under.

If (and it is a big if) all these new road schemes go ahead, it will mean lots of jobs for those working in the commercial sector. Bad for archaeology but good for archaeologists – this is a paradox I’m not sure how to resolve.

I am concerned for the environment and don’t want to see the damage wrought by the road building schemes, but I have many friends and colleagues who work in the commercial sector and for whom these kind of projects mean jobs.

Which should take priority?

David Petts