12th February 2008, 12:40 PM
Hi Chaps
The problem I find is that things get very mixed up. For example, I have never been a supporter of the PAS as I believe that it is not the best way to spend public money. That does not mean I am anti metal detectorists or one of the "old boy network" merely that I believe local archaeological curators may be the best people to decide how to allocate community archaeology funds rather then somebody in London. Instead of having a centralised London based scheme I think it would be far better to allocate each county/region funding which is ring-fenced for projects involving metal detectorists and local communities. I also believe that all information relating to archaeology and the historic environment should be placed on the local SMR or HER because heritage is a community asset. Therefore, I am bound to have a problem with a scheme which does not require locational data as that is key to the usefulness of the data.
Every time I say this sort of thing on-line etc I am instantly attacked for being either anti-MD or short sighted as the PAS is "the best community archaeology project in the country".
Over the last two years my colleagues and I have (without using public funds) organised excavation open days and public talks which have involved over 9,000 local people, including using local metal detectorists (volunteering with a professional unit) to survey a battlefield site in advance of a pipeline to ensure proper mitigation. I stress again "at no cost to the public purse". This is over and above the day to day planning/HER work we do. There ain't no glossy expensive annual report about that despite the fact that it was clearly best practice! If we had a Community Archaeology budget of say 15,000 pounds (while a FLO costs c.30,000 pounds) think what I could achieve. Also before the PAS we used to get metal detectorist coming into the HER (well it was the SMR then) so that we could identify finds and they would tell us where they found them! No problems, no hassle so its not like this wasn't happening before the PAS we just didn't have the PR resources (that PAS wastes on spin which should be spent directly on community archaeology) to show off with.
Hope this ain't a rant and I can't wait for the normal barrage of abuse I normally get for disagreeing with a very expensive flawed scheme that requires reviews which make it impossible to say the scheme has failed in order to validate its own existence.
Steven
The problem I find is that things get very mixed up. For example, I have never been a supporter of the PAS as I believe that it is not the best way to spend public money. That does not mean I am anti metal detectorists or one of the "old boy network" merely that I believe local archaeological curators may be the best people to decide how to allocate community archaeology funds rather then somebody in London. Instead of having a centralised London based scheme I think it would be far better to allocate each county/region funding which is ring-fenced for projects involving metal detectorists and local communities. I also believe that all information relating to archaeology and the historic environment should be placed on the local SMR or HER because heritage is a community asset. Therefore, I am bound to have a problem with a scheme which does not require locational data as that is key to the usefulness of the data.
Every time I say this sort of thing on-line etc I am instantly attacked for being either anti-MD or short sighted as the PAS is "the best community archaeology project in the country".
Over the last two years my colleagues and I have (without using public funds) organised excavation open days and public talks which have involved over 9,000 local people, including using local metal detectorists (volunteering with a professional unit) to survey a battlefield site in advance of a pipeline to ensure proper mitigation. I stress again "at no cost to the public purse". This is over and above the day to day planning/HER work we do. There ain't no glossy expensive annual report about that despite the fact that it was clearly best practice! If we had a Community Archaeology budget of say 15,000 pounds (while a FLO costs c.30,000 pounds) think what I could achieve. Also before the PAS we used to get metal detectorist coming into the HER (well it was the SMR then) so that we could identify finds and they would tell us where they found them! No problems, no hassle so its not like this wasn't happening before the PAS we just didn't have the PR resources (that PAS wastes on spin which should be spent directly on community archaeology) to show off with.
Hope this ain't a rant and I can't wait for the normal barrage of abuse I normally get for disagreeing with a very expensive flawed scheme that requires reviews which make it impossible to say the scheme has failed in order to validate its own existence.
Steven