IfA and the Royal Charter - update on progress

[BAJR]

Thanks for bringing us back on track again Dinoaur

[RedEarth]

Protect from who exactly? :face-thinks:


All IFA want to do is protect themselves commercially from other competing archaeologists who don't subscribe to their own particular view of the profession/bank accounts :face-stir:

Of course, no one who took a view contrary to the IfA could be accused of doing anything to protect their own position/bank accounts.

[P Prentice]

It seems to me that it is the archaeology which should make the report or archive important if anybody thinks that it is worthwhile to produce them. ....... and economically unsustainable. Nobody whats your reports or put it more bluntly nobody will pay you any money for them I can guarantee you that 99% of all reports ever attempted if tossed in a bin will not make a difference to anybody.

Thing is you want to base chartering and the whole point of the ifa on monitoring. What I would agree to is a system which once you have joined allows you to do what you want. Like once you qualify as a doctor you can prescribe drugs to your clients. If you want to go around producing most excellent reports out of a load of old rubbish please don't drag me into it.

she has a point here. a chartered archaeologist really should be able to determine what is worth doing and what is not. a chartered archaeologist should be able to command prestigeious fees for their expertise. a chartered archaeologist, whether on site or in management should be accountable to their peers - and only their peers.
it is dino's fallacy to suggest that only management want chartered status and they want diggers to be lackies. currently diggers are lackies when they should be chartered. mostly managers want to get paid more than they currently do just like everybody else. if diggers are paid more then management would be also. one of the main reasons diggers are paid so badly is because of the enormous expense of back covering, beaurocracy and administration of pointless report writing and archive deposition. a charterered archaeologist should be able to determine what is worth saying and what is worth keeping.

and where does the ifa fit in this utopia?

there will be no need for the ifa

[pdurdin]

a charterered archaeologist should be able to determine what is worth saying and what is worth keeping.

There is, of course, a fundamental problem with this: nobody can know what might turn up tomorrow/next week/next year/next decade and prove that Thing X, which Mr. Chartered Archaeologist decided wasn't worth keeping, actually would've been really handy to keep...

[Unitof1]

Dear pudding I took my dog for a walk today and watched one of the biggest tractors I have ever seen with what looked like a 1.5 m prong rip up a huge field. In my time I have pulled up from this field objects representing just about every period that you may care mention. I keep them to myself. It's not in the her for so forth. Anyway what I would like to assure you is that every archaeologist and everybody else discard/ignore can't be bothered to record an incredible amount of stuff which would probably be revolutionary. so what

that's not the point. What ever truth that you come across is irrelevant to all this lost data that you have no proof ever existed. Purdin you are still coming accros something which was last used by x y centuries ago to do what ever you want to say thy were doing irrispective of what is being lost. What more do you want. Are you a Mormon?

[Crocodile]

There is, of course, a fundamental problem with this: nobody can know what might turn up tomorrow/next week/next year/next decade and prove that Thing X, which Mr. Chartered Archaeologist decided wasn't worth keeping, actually would've been really handy to keep...

Reminds me of a that cupboard full of empty jam jars that might come in handy one day, ignoring the usefulness of the cupboard space taken up by empty jam jars for the past ten years. This type of behaviour is called hoarding and in its extreme form leaves people with rubbish dumps in their houses. If there is a reason to keep something for the possibility of future research then by all means put forward a cohesive argument for it but saying that something unknown may well happen in the future is no reason to keep everything, it just can't be done, museums are already stopping deposits because they are too full. Despite this I had one museum advise me to keep flowerpot because the report would apparently not make sense without all the finds. This went against there own guidelines on disposal.

[Dinosaur]

she has a point here. a chartered archaeologist really should be able to determine what is worth doing and what is not. a chartered archaeologist should be able to command prestigeious fees for their expertise. a chartered archaeologist, whether on site or in management should be accountable to their peers - and only their peers.
it is dino's fallacy to suggest that only management want chartered status and they want diggers to be lackies. currently diggers are lackies when they should be chartered. mostly managers want to get paid more than they currently do just like everybody else. if diggers are paid more then management would be also. one of the main reasons diggers are paid so badly is because of the enormous expense of back covering, beaurocracy and administration of pointless report writing and archive deposition. a charterered archaeologist should be able to determine what is worth saying and what is worth keeping.

and where does the ifa fit in this utopia?

there will be no need for the ifa

Actually I don't think PP and myself have particularly differing visions for where commercial archaeology should be going, merely some disputatious niggles in the small print

[Dinosaur]

Of course, no one who took a view contrary to the IfA could be accused of doing anything to protect their own position/bank accounts.

Why not? Thats the whole point of commercial archaeology, to make money. Its just that one group of money-makers are attempting to unilaterally restrict the rights of the rest to do the same in an open and competative environment, tender by tender. If they're so good they shouldn't be scared of the competition

[Sith]

I had one museum advise me to keep flowerpot because the report would apparently not make sense without all the finds. This went against there own guidelines on disposal.

I agree with what you're saying here, but I've also been present when someone came looking for a soil sample that had been stored for 15 years because they had finally found a good reason to process it.. two weeks after it was chucked in a skip for taking up valuable space.

[Crocodile]

I agree with what you're saying here, but I've also been present when someone came looking for a soil sample that had been stored for 15 years because they had finally found a good reason to process it.. two weeks after it was chucked in a skip for taking up valuable space.

If there was a reason for sampling it should it not have already been processed a long time ago? And if you couldn't find a reason to process it in Fifteen years then it would not surely have been controversial if it had not been sampled at all.