Eating Cake

[Unitof1]

I wondered that now there is a standard for archaeological advice by historical environment services

http://www.archaeologists.net/sites/defa...y-2012.pdf

if that meant that any group of people giving so called archaeological advice should register as a RO with the ifa and if not why not?

[Dinosaur]

yet another IFA document telling people (in this case curators) that only ROs are competent to do archaeology in this country (Ha! Ha!), and the only competent archaeologists are MIFAs (many of whom from personal experience are muppets), where do they think they're coming from? !

[BAJR]

There does seem to be a muppetry in many places. it is not just an ifa preserve.

At least with the IfA you can complain about muppetry... :face-angel:

It would be nice though if the mark of an RO was one of hallowed status... rather than a wry chuckle. Whether fairly gained or not.

[Unitof1]

mifas dont want to fill in context sheets, surely thats the biggest muppetry. Its not a laughing matter except to their faces.

I know that its friday but what I am thinking is that if you are a mifa and you work in anything to which this wonderful standard applies surely the ifa should be regularly insistting that those organisations apply for RO status. Just on money grabbing principles alone. Why should field units have to become ROs and this lot not. There does seem to be one or two ROs who do do a bit of curation on their patches, I wonder what they think of thoses who are not ROs. Infact thinking about it now that there is a standard for so called archaeological advice and presumably that advice is advice without an evaluation should their RO subscriptions to the ifa have gone up or can you just specialising in ROing which standards you like?

[Martin Locock]

Although the question of the treatment of ROs within the Standard is debatable, the broader point that curators and consultants advising on archaeological are being expected to reach a level of professional behaviour is a welcome innovation - the bizarre inconsistencies of approach across county boundaries are at elast open to some form of scrutiny.

[Unitof1]

what I am trying to establish is should curators organisations be made to be ROs?

[Martin Locock]

Yes they should. Some already are. (In some cases it is difficult for them to sign up because of the local authority structure they work within, but there has been a strong push to do so because it is much clearer when defending a specialist professional area of activity from being downgraded to generic "planning etc" services.)

[Unitof1]

So there are local authority ROs? I have not heard of any.

[Martin Locock]

According to http://www.archaeologists.net/ro Cornwall, Gloucestershire and Norfolk are, plus joint curators/contractors the Welsh Archaeological Trusts and Worcestershire.

[Dinosaur]

Should 'public' organisations such as these be permitted to sign up as lackeys of what is, after all, a subscription-paying private membership club like IFA? Surely that's a conflict of interest? Curators are supposed to represent the independent public/taxpayer oversight on archaeology, playing to any other tune immediately destroys any credibility in the system (is it even legal?). IFA seems, in all its documentation, to promote the interests of its membership/ROs at the expense of non-members. If such a curatorial organisation (supposedly public servants) declared itself to be officially affiliated to a better known organisation with such aims, e.g. the Masons, there would be public uproar!