29th April 2009, 02:44 PM
I was going to quote from Trowelmonkeys last bit to agree - and then realised that I agreed with pretty much all of it, especially the 'too fast' critisism from academics!
In the last few years I've been involved with a number of sites which proved to be FAR more significant than was originally thought. In all cases, further funding and time was negotiated and the work was done amazingly well - and is being written up NOW!
So, I'm standing up and saying I'm proud of the work that I and 'commercial' colleagues have been doing since PPG16. We've moved the underestanding of the archaeological resource, as well as archaeological skills, on tremendously. Good for us!
And a 'developer tax' is, as always, far more contentious than many people will make out. This has been discussed before, but to hit some of the high points
- what if there's a few REALLY important sites one year that uses up all the money? does everything else go?
- Who gets paid to do the work? Are we back to a 1 unit/county/region situation? (and what happens if they're already busy?)
- Who ensures standards?
- What happens to the 'speculative' sites - where there isn't really a whole load of evidence, but that's because no work has been done there before?
- Who makes sure it's written up (If nothing else, the developers know that they HAVE to make us write it up, of the planning permission isn't completely discharged!)
In the last few years I've been involved with a number of sites which proved to be FAR more significant than was originally thought. In all cases, further funding and time was negotiated and the work was done amazingly well - and is being written up NOW!
So, I'm standing up and saying I'm proud of the work that I and 'commercial' colleagues have been doing since PPG16. We've moved the underestanding of the archaeological resource, as well as archaeological skills, on tremendously. Good for us!
And a 'developer tax' is, as always, far more contentious than many people will make out. This has been discussed before, but to hit some of the high points
- what if there's a few REALLY important sites one year that uses up all the money? does everything else go?
- Who gets paid to do the work? Are we back to a 1 unit/county/region situation? (and what happens if they're already busy?)
- Who ensures standards?
- What happens to the 'speculative' sites - where there isn't really a whole load of evidence, but that's because no work has been done there before?
- Who makes sure it's written up (If nothing else, the developers know that they HAVE to make us write it up, of the planning permission isn't completely discharged!)