27th March 2007, 07:18 PM
The commercial environment is a totally artifical one which is its problem. If you produce houses or radios your customers will decide whether to buy on a mixture of cost and quality. The real 'hidden' consumer in archaeology is not the developer who choses the contractor and pays through a disguised form of tax but government and its heritage policy. They could abolish PPG16 tomorrow and end commercial archaeology or levy a flat tax on developers like the French and give all the work to a central unit if they so chose. The first is more likely than the latter. The problem is a lack of any proper quality control and unfortunately little imposition by many curators of even minimal standards. I have noticed recently that Welsh units are no longer marking finds in order to win contracts. All it needs is for curators to write that they should be so in briefs - a mere sentence- I await developments. As it is we are heading to a point where unwashed, unmarked and unclassified finds quantified by weight could be the norm. And yet again the reliance is going to be on the nearly retired free-lance. Where is the next generation of specialists going to come from. This is storing up problems for the future. No amount of EH training days is going to help if there are no jobs.