18th April 2006, 07:17 PM
I absolutely hate the whole concept of work incentives in site based archaeology. I've seen its divisive and demotivating results in other industries and cannot think of many applications in archaeology where it might be useful. A possible exception might be finds or specialist work involving 'piece work', but certainly not anything in the field.
As an academic exercise I can understand Dr. Pete's desire to put aside for the moment the issue of standards to engender debate, but the resulting debate is going to be pretty sterile is it not? Also, an assumption that an incentive system could work without standards being lowered assumes that there is inefficiency in the system. More to the point it implies that the inefficiency is with the excavators. (Bad management is going to be difficult to improve with incentives I feel) Compared to every other industry I've been part of, and I've seen a few, archaeological excavators graft. The one's that don't, have generally been demotivated to the point where they don't give a s**t anymore and are about to leave the profession. (Also difficult to incentivise) So not a lot of inefficiency there.
Central to the problems in archaeology is the standards vs. time/profit equation. In every company I have worked for this has translated into an adversarial system where the managers are pushing for quicker work and resulting higher profit, while the excavator's (most of them) are pushing for more time and higher standards of work. The resulting compromise varies a bit depending on the experience/bolshiness of the excavators and the ruthlessness of the manager, but seems to work. I long ago gave up on the curator having any real impact on the standard of site work, except in the most extreme cases, and sometimes not even then.
Any incentive system for field work would remove this balance at the expence of archaeological standards. Nothing could be clearer.
I am even cautious about co-operative units, for the same reasons. Good idea in theory, but I can see individuals who are concerned about standards pretty quickly falling out with those that are more profit oriented.
Sorry to be so negative.
As an academic exercise I can understand Dr. Pete's desire to put aside for the moment the issue of standards to engender debate, but the resulting debate is going to be pretty sterile is it not? Also, an assumption that an incentive system could work without standards being lowered assumes that there is inefficiency in the system. More to the point it implies that the inefficiency is with the excavators. (Bad management is going to be difficult to improve with incentives I feel) Compared to every other industry I've been part of, and I've seen a few, archaeological excavators graft. The one's that don't, have generally been demotivated to the point where they don't give a s**t anymore and are about to leave the profession. (Also difficult to incentivise) So not a lot of inefficiency there.
Central to the problems in archaeology is the standards vs. time/profit equation. In every company I have worked for this has translated into an adversarial system where the managers are pushing for quicker work and resulting higher profit, while the excavator's (most of them) are pushing for more time and higher standards of work. The resulting compromise varies a bit depending on the experience/bolshiness of the excavators and the ruthlessness of the manager, but seems to work. I long ago gave up on the curator having any real impact on the standard of site work, except in the most extreme cases, and sometimes not even then.
Any incentive system for field work would remove this balance at the expence of archaeological standards. Nothing could be clearer.
I am even cautious about co-operative units, for the same reasons. Good idea in theory, but I can see individuals who are concerned about standards pretty quickly falling out with those that are more profit oriented.
Sorry to be so negative.