6th November 2009, 01:19 PM
Vulpes Wrote:Red earth - the word is bored.
and I find your attitude peculiar. Surely the reason we are doing archaeology is because of it's public interest - as distinct to road building which is done because we need roads - not to increase our knowledge or understanding of how roads are built.
I thought for a moment you were saying my post was boring!
I agree wholeheartedly that we are doing the work because of the public interest and would, if it were possible, have people coming to look at every site I ever have any involvement in. I spend a pretty massive amount of my time giving talks on projects too, which is a particularly good and cost-effective means of presenting the results to people (and I hasten to add) I am often doing this outside of any requirement in the project brief - because there normally isn't one, so if there will be with the proposed PPS then great. And before anyone says anything, I'm know that there are lots of people of give their time for free giving talks, presentations etc etc, which is also to be commended.
The point remains however that there are different levels of public interest - for example, I am quite glad to know that any number of museums/galleries exist in this country and am interested in their survival because I consider them to be a good thing. But I am certainly not going to be able to visit them all. I am glad that there are bodies that preserve our National Parks/AONBs etc because that is also a good thing, but I am again not going to visit them all. Similarly, there will be plenty of members of the public who have a general interest in archaeology and consider it worth saving/examining/recording in advance of development, but they do not anticipate visiting the actual sites while work is ongoing because they realise the impracticalities of doing so.
Similarly, I am quite interested to know that new things are being built because I consider this is (in some cases at least) a good thing, but I certainly wouldn't want to to visit the building site and see how things are going. I would also assume that engineers learn from what they are building and therefore increase their knowledge of how, for example, roads are built.
On the other hand there will be strange sad people who would really like to see roads being built and boreholes bored because they find such things interesting. Why don't planning applications include contingency costs from the developer for this?
While this is a fairly spurious point the important thing is how to determine what level of public involvement is appropriate, who pays for it, and, as I mentioned, the potential risk for funding to be cut back in other areas as a result where it is badly needed i.e. the archaeological work itself.
The other aspect of this is are we really doing it for the public interest? We are constantly being required to consider academic research aims (and being lambasted by our academic colleagues for not doing enough of it - does academic funding require a public involvement?), which I think would interest a fairly small proportion of the general public! I would suggest that the level of interest that most members of the public have is along the lines I outlined above - they like to know it happens, but they aren't necessarily interested enough to come and visit a site.