Posts: 8
Threads: 1
Joined: Feb 2014
Barking
Quote: So "society" pays for post-ex, archiving, and publication? Not likely, but then again I'd vote for a system where ALL the archaeology was done by the State, with developers made to stand aside and wait until we had sterilised their site to our satisfaction, and then they pay a levy (say 5% of total development cost?) towards a central pot that supports all the work of this State department around the country..
. Not likely...universities got to charge their students tuition. By "our" do you mean go anywhere do any excavation field archaeologist? I would suggest that the developer Still pays for the post ex. What I am suggesting is that the "curators" buy any archaeology they want for their archives/museum, If they dont want it, no archive no publication. The price is minimally what the curators forced the developer to pay plus what ever they might want us to do to embellish the archive plus any extra value that could be considered for the significance of the "find".
To get to this nirvana go anywhere excavate any site field archaeologists might need to withhold their records and archives and somebody (and this might be the developer seeing this as a way to get their money back from the state) might need to take the authorising authorities to some court to get some legal precedent and point out that the authorising authorities insisted that the developer undertook archaeology for the development permission, that the authorising authorities are inplicit polluters (they must have a get out card for that) and that there are numerous international agreements that require archaeology to be done and how archaeology is done is that it ends up being "owned" in an archive that you might like to call a museum store. I don't know where the curators should get thier budget from for HERs and museums but I would suggest that they get them increased.
I don't understand economics but I imagine that museum pocurment should be considered as a contribution to gross domestic product where as in the current model archives are given no value presumably because they have been donated. The above model would also have a profound affect on the granting of permissions and I imagine an increase in pre application evaluation. Hopefully it would end go anywhere watching briefs being undertaken without archaeologists insisting on prior evaluation.
.....nature was dead and the past does not exist
Posts: 1
Threads: 0
Joined: Apr 2010
Shouldn't curators be enforcing planning conditions and standards/extent of work rather more than they do? [don't ask!] - and if they did wouldn't that increase the amount of archaeological work and the value of archaeologists to developers? [who'd need to fulfil their planning consents a touch more carefully]
Posts: 1
Threads: 0
Joined: Jan 2009
Dinosaur Wrote:Shouldn't curators be enforcing planning conditions and standards/extent of work rather more than they do? [don't ask!] - and if they did wouldn't that increase the amount of archaeological work and the value of archaeologists to developers? [who'd need to fulfil their planning consents a touch more carefully]
In a nutshell i'd say yes.
Posts: 0
Threads: 0
Joined: Feb 2011
the reality is that standards are maintained by curators and that a contractors duty is to their client. the curators have propagated the advesarial system and are the self appointed arbitors of adequacy. it has become a contractors job to get awat with as much as possible with the caveat of doing a bit more if caught.
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers
Posts: 1
Threads: 0
Joined: Apr 2010
Doesn't really work if the curators don't do any monitoring to check compliance and pass every report however poor?
Posts: 0
Threads: 0
Joined: Feb 2011
then that is the standard
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers
Posts: 0
Threads: 0
Joined: Dec 2011
Yep - without effective monitoring, no set of rules is going to improve things! Trouble is, while the "profession" is developing standards based on monitoring by Curator "wicket-keepers", Gov't has been decimating the ranks of said curators, making the necessary workload untenable...
(Kinda reminds me of the gun-ban kneejerk legislation after Dunblane. If the authorities had managed to enforce the laws already in place at the time, that loser wouldn't have had guns in the first place. Sadly, too much of our legislative framework is undermined by lack of resources to implement it properly - while we pay muppets to make up new laws to clean up after the latest enforcement failure!)
Posts: 1
Threads: 0
Joined: Jun 2005
Dinosaur Wrote:Doesn't really work if the curators don't do any monitoring to check compliance and pass every report however poor?
Or if they are 'leant on' by their local authority masters (the ultimate arbiters of planning decisions in most cases), not to make too much of a fuss.
D. Vader
Senior Consultant
Vader Maull & Palpatine
Archaeological Consultants
A tremor in the Force. The last time I felt it was in the presence of Tony Robinson.
Posts: 1
Threads: 0
Joined: Jan 2009
Yep......its an odd situation.
There is often a thin thread holding the argument in place that the archaeology needs to be dug, recorded, archived and published to agreed standards. A thread that can be cut at any time by a whole host of 'decision makers'.
A thin thread 'protecting' the nations cultural heritage, a rare and rapidly declining resource.
I often find few on a site truly understand what thin ice a supervisor/PO/manager is on. One wrong word and the archaeology gets destroyed.
I once heard a story about a meeting between a client, the archaeological manager and county archaeologist about an upstanding Bronze Age burial monument in the way of a linear scheme. (old history now - the details have been adjusted to protect the innocent, but the jist is the same).
The client wanted the archaeological team off site. The archaeologists wanted to do a proper job (as the client wouldn't divert the scheme around the monument). The county archaeologist said 'well why not just machine half of the monument away and record the section. Job done.'
How the hell is that ok!?
And of course it was the poor old archaeological company/manager that got all the stick, even though they (somehow) managed to do more than the county suggested.
Some people think that archaeological managers (PO/SPO etc) have some kind of magic wand that can make any client step into line....it is rather the opposite.
Another old story (details adjusted) from another linear scheme illustrates what can happen if the PO/SPO/manager pushes too hard. A graveyard is discovered, work starts in earnest. A wrong word in the wrong ear and the team finds themselves literally thrown off site. The client has decided to tunnel their pipe under the graveyard so as to 'preserve it insitu' and have agreement from the county. The tunneling results in the ground being thrust upwards damaging the archaeology. But oh well, we had agreement to do this...county seems to back down. Client pulls any funding for post-ex as they are permitted development.
Posts: 0
Threads: 0
Joined: Dec 2004
Pay and conditions is an old problem that in my view can only have two possible (and one ridiculously unlikely) solutions: Valletta is adopted wholesale and licensing is drafted in. Arguably, this would/could transform a service industry into a profession. Commercial units offer consultancy in-house (increasingly a contemporary model) to avoid waving goodbye to the large sums of money that Clients hand over to stand-alone consultancies. This would enable commercial units to offer a complete package to Clients and would significantly increase income-hence an ability to improve pay and conditions? The wildly ideal but ridiculously unlikely answer would be to shift public opinion and political will into a position where the tax-paying voters value their collectively owned heritage so much that they are willing to either pay more taxes or, increase the costs of mortgages
This is probably going to get me hammered but........ pay and conditions are actually improving in real terms in comparison with my first steps in archaeology (12k a year, no PPE, no health and safety, two week contracts blah blah blah). Things are better but it has taken enough time to accumulate 3m of modern strat. Archaeology is and to my knowledge always has been the lowest paid job a UK graduate can walk into. I certainly don`t advocate a maintenance of the status quo but I do sleep better at night when all of my days are not spent gritting my teeth about it. I spent the best part of ten years ranting about how sh*t it all is whilst loving every minute of my job. Once I accepted that I would never own my own house and just enjoyed my job, life was easier. I did walk away and spent nearly four years away from the trenches. Money was good but I hated it. Can`t win.
Truth is (for me at least) is that I`m done with ranting. There are ways and means of increasing your income (not involving clingfilm bikinis and street corners I may add) and one effective way of doing that is to take your field experience and enhance it by widening your skill-set. Fact is-field archaeologists will never be paid on a par with other specialists...I know that is wrong and that it drives us nuts but that`s how it is. In simple terms, there are reasonably well-paid jobs in the heritage sector.....hunt them, hunt the skills needed to apply for them and invest in your own CPD. Increase in experience, skills, knowledge and levels of responsibility = exponential increases in income. Tiz a natural progression.
