9th April 2010, 10:14 AM
RedEarth Wrote:Yawn, should the article be retitled 'Academic Archaeologists at Least 10 years behind the times'? Most of the stuff mentioned in this article was discussed at least two years ago, and yet Commercial archaeologists are again criticised for the results of their work not being available. I particularly like the quote:
'Academic archaeologists are used to a system in which researchers conduct excavations and then publish their observations in monographs and journal articles, which are then available in libraries'.
Yeah, perhaps 20-30 years after they have finished on site! At least most commercial work does become available at some point, even if perhaps only in a grey literature report, and the finds are likely to be in a museum. In fact, why do we have to put up with the term 'grey literature', that in itself seems to convey a sense of boringness (OK, that's probably true in a lot of cases), but also invisibilty, or vagueness. Can we use another term? This just constantly reads to me as academics not liking the idea that they are not in control of the data!
Hi
Fully agree!
They are not "grey literature" they are Archaeological Reports and they form a major part of what should be the backbone of any archaeological research... the HER.
One example is that a lecture (who shall remain nameless) at a localish university has been giving a walk and talk around a historic town in my patch. The lecturer has been pointing out to students all the clues that indicate the location of the Saxon burgh and gos on to describe the layout of the burgh! However, the lecturer doesn't know about the eight evaluations which have taken place over the last ten years in the "Saxon burgh" which have shown that there is a complete absence of "Saxon" archaeology in that area, but do show Roman field systems!
What's really scary is that I get the impression from Bradley's surprise that many academics are blissfully unaware of what an HER is, or what it contains and so they don't seem to consult it when carry out "research". One factor completely overlooked is that many archaeological journals will not publish excavation reports because they have so many "academic" papers submitted. This is because universities gain points for academic publications (with points equalling funding) so most field archaeologists can't publish in the journals academics read!
Steven