17th January 2008, 11:40 AM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by gumbo
Hi Gary, from a few of your posts overthe last couple of days I think you have perhaps sold youself a bit short about offering voluntary labour. I get the impression that a lot of archaeological contractors now dont want volunteer detectorists because they want to EMPLOY them! A bit of marketing and the entreprenurial detectorist will find themselves with a 60 km pipeline to survey for a couple of grand!
Hi Chaps
At which point the employed MDs become archaeologists under law (as discussed on another thread) and can no longer gain financially under the Treasure Act. Also as professionals most of us sign up to standards of recording (generally the IFA standards but not always) which mean that we record findspots precisely and have a responsibility to make our results public (through the HERs/SMRs) with reasonable dispatch.
Gary,
I know you don't like my comments as your last dismissive comment made clear when I tried to describe the system last time but I will try again as I think you misunderstood my motivations.
Almost all archaeology in Britain is carried out by commercial companies (normally called Units) working on behalf of developers in advance (or during) development. The exceptions to this are Universities (normally training or research digs), local amateur groups and things like the Time Team (who are commercial but are predominantly a media company not an archaeological unit). Although funded by the developer the units are monitored by Local Authority archaeologists (often called County Mounties on these forums). These county mounties advise planning authorities on the archaeological implications of developments and are the "police" you ask about. They are the "public funded" archaeologist in that they work for councils. Their work can be scrutinised as they are public servants and their advice is quoted when locally elected members (councillors) make planning decisions or the planning officers who deal with planning applications on members behalf and are therefore on public record. As they work for local communities its is quite right that they be scrutinised and I welcome that and often insist on public open days on excavations etc so that people can see whats going on. Also I give loads of talks to community groups (in my County) to explain archaeology (usually by highlighting interesting excavations etc).
County mounties also monitor the commercial arch units to ensure that work is carried out to recognised national standards and is "fit for purpose". They also operate the HERs/SMRs. Our very own Mr Hosty and myself for example are "county mounties" while others on these forums work for commercial units or are consultants who are the developers advisor who may sometimes agree or disagree with a county mounty and so are a "check" on county mounties requiring too much work (sorry consultants I know this is such an oversimplification of your work but hey, I don't get paid by the word like you do
)Therefore, most archaeologist do NOT have to account for their spending of public money because despite what most people seem to think they don't get any. I think this is one of the problems, I often hear MDs, local objectors to development and others saying its wrong that archaeologist act a certain way because "after all we are paying their wages" well mostly they ain't a developer is.
Hope this helps you understand the system and I'm sure that if you want clarification anybody on this forum will be willing to answer your questions.
Steven