5th December 2005, 07:42 PM
The problems faced in archaeology boil down to poor wages, poor employment conditions (short contracts, training, pensions etc.), and sometimes poor quality of work.
These can all be laid at the door of competitive tendering and the relatively unregulated market that this produces. Units try to hold down their costs so that they can win contracts more easily - And cost is the main issue; the developers who pay for archaeology are not like ordinary consumer. We might pay extra to have quality oil put in our car by a company who specialise in that particular vehicle, but a business only cares about getting the archaeology done to the minimum standard specified by the curator.
Wages/conditionsCompetition between units drives 'em down. Wages/training/pensions obviously, short contracts because units can't afford to carry staff when the work dries up and have unpredicatable workloads since there is no guarantee they will win contracts.
You can't compare life before the profession existed (when a few archaeologists were employed by councils and had to apply for grants to pay subsistence wages to volunteers to do archaeological work that had no legal basis to it anyway) to the situation now where we have a fully fledged profession on a legal (-ish!) basis. If what Kevin suggests is true, then wages have not in fact increased in relative terms anyway.
Quality is more complicated, but the aspect raised by archaeo_logical about not having enough time on site is also down to competitive tendering. Its usually because units have undercut each other to try to win the contact by claiming to be able to do the work in a quicker time/with fewer resources. Its an inevitable tendency in a climate of cut-throat competition.
There are issues of experience; it is certainly a lot cheaper to employ a team of new graduates than a more mixed team including more experienced field workers... and cheaper means a lower quote. Also experienced archaeologists often leave the profession because they can't afford to buy a house/have a family/go on holiday because the market is holding down their wages or their future employment is uncertain.
regulation of the marketplace is down to the curators - they are under resourced, but do their best to moniter quality. They don't/can't moniter wages and conditions.
The upshot seems to be that, under our free-market set-up, it is diffcult to do anything about wages and conditions, and the under-resourced curators will constantly be battling against the tendency toward cut-price fieldwork. I'm not saying that the system doesn't work - it does after a fashion thanks to the hard work of curators and the dedication of fieldworkers - but is it how we should envisage archaeology's long term future?
These can all be laid at the door of competitive tendering and the relatively unregulated market that this produces. Units try to hold down their costs so that they can win contracts more easily - And cost is the main issue; the developers who pay for archaeology are not like ordinary consumer. We might pay extra to have quality oil put in our car by a company who specialise in that particular vehicle, but a business only cares about getting the archaeology done to the minimum standard specified by the curator.
Wages/conditionsCompetition between units drives 'em down. Wages/training/pensions obviously, short contracts because units can't afford to carry staff when the work dries up and have unpredicatable workloads since there is no guarantee they will win contracts.
You can't compare life before the profession existed (when a few archaeologists were employed by councils and had to apply for grants to pay subsistence wages to volunteers to do archaeological work that had no legal basis to it anyway) to the situation now where we have a fully fledged profession on a legal (-ish!) basis. If what Kevin suggests is true, then wages have not in fact increased in relative terms anyway.
Quality is more complicated, but the aspect raised by archaeo_logical about not having enough time on site is also down to competitive tendering. Its usually because units have undercut each other to try to win the contact by claiming to be able to do the work in a quicker time/with fewer resources. Its an inevitable tendency in a climate of cut-throat competition.
There are issues of experience; it is certainly a lot cheaper to employ a team of new graduates than a more mixed team including more experienced field workers... and cheaper means a lower quote. Also experienced archaeologists often leave the profession because they can't afford to buy a house/have a family/go on holiday because the market is holding down their wages or their future employment is uncertain.
regulation of the marketplace is down to the curators - they are under resourced, but do their best to moniter quality. They don't/can't moniter wages and conditions.
The upshot seems to be that, under our free-market set-up, it is diffcult to do anything about wages and conditions, and the under-resourced curators will constantly be battling against the tendency toward cut-price fieldwork. I'm not saying that the system doesn't work - it does after a fashion thanks to the hard work of curators and the dedication of fieldworkers - but is it how we should envisage archaeology's long term future?