21st April 2009, 06:05 PM
At the moment is clearly a breach of employment and human rights law for a curator to specify IFA membership. The government could bring in a licensing scheme as in Ireland but it would only be practical for directing excavations. However, any licensing scheme will always be arbitrary If we brought in a standard similar to the USA where you need an MA to manage even the smallest project I can hear the howls of protest. I don't believe it would make much difference to standards which can only be enforced practically by curators- at the moment some do and some don't. I suppose it would set a base standard which is all you can expect but its main result would be to exclude amateurs from digging. I have come across both incompetent and fraudulent work in my career over the last 30 years and the perpetrators would probably be the fist people to be granted licences. If you award licences (eg an BA or MA plus 3 years experience to direct a major excavation) you have to have a set standard and grant them to anyone who meets them unless you can stand up in court and prove ( very difficult) otherwise. Anyway (and I have a PhD so I am not biased here) some of the best archaeologistsI have worked with are non-graduates. Licensing pot reports - rubbish- everyone has to start somewhere and pot people are getting older and older- just go to a conference.