24th October 2006, 04:15 PM
Hello 1man, just to be clear: I don't think that the consultants are necessarily the problem in this area (although I can think of many who do not always put quality over short-term price savings); this situation is often caused by inexperienced clients making a cost based decision which then results in the situation outlined above. This is made worse by the fact that there is often little done (to judge by some of the evaluation reports from many units that I am forced to read) to assure that the report is of a high enough quality to achive its stated aims: namely to, as far as practicable, accurately assess the nature and extent of any archaeological remains sufficiently to create a reliable mitigation strategy.
I do not think there is one group of people to blame for this: undoubtedly some curators could do more to enforce quality, but they only have a limited remit (don't get me wrong, I know many curators who work very hard to maintain standards and that the problem here is often systemic rather than with individuals); equally there are units willing to undertake poor quality fieldwork and produce bad reports in the first place. I also admit that all units have probably done this at one point or another...no one is perfect. The main point I tried to make (rather poorly really after re-reading my original entry) is that the use of students would not confer a real advantage financially to a project's budget unless there was either a lack of quality control of the fieldwork through to the post excavation or a very skilled and experienced batch of students on the site willing to work more or less for free (which I suppose could happen).
don't panic!
I do not think there is one group of people to blame for this: undoubtedly some curators could do more to enforce quality, but they only have a limited remit (don't get me wrong, I know many curators who work very hard to maintain standards and that the problem here is often systemic rather than with individuals); equally there are units willing to undertake poor quality fieldwork and produce bad reports in the first place. I also admit that all units have probably done this at one point or another...no one is perfect. The main point I tried to make (rather poorly really after re-reading my original entry) is that the use of students would not confer a real advantage financially to a project's budget unless there was either a lack of quality control of the fieldwork through to the post excavation or a very skilled and experienced batch of students on the site willing to work more or less for free (which I suppose could happen).
don't panic!