9th April 2010, 02:05 PM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:Indirectly....It strikes me that the new PPS 5 guidance could be a way out of the dilemma of 'grey literature'. The guidance suggests (Policy HE12) that developers have a responsibility to ensure the publication and dissemination of the results of archaeological investigation and that this responsibility can be guaranteed by planning condition. As most commercial archaeology is planning related surely there is now a mechanism to ensure that the worst of practice highlighted in Richard's survey becomes a thing of the past.....(an unintentional pun!!)
Hi
Planning conditions already do this, and I think the point is being missed here. In fact all archaeological projects ARE published its just that some academics don't know where to look.
All standards and guidance (and briefs/specs etc) have all specified publication of results of projects. There is NO real problem, small projects are summarised with a note, and larger projects have larger reports in county Proceedings! All arch projects are in effect published. PPS will help as its more explicit but all PPG16 based WSI's should include publication anyway.
By not publishing the results of planning related projects based on a WSI then archaeologists would not have fulfilled the WSI and have failed in their professional duty to their client which could result in enforcement action.
As commercial/curatorial archaeologists must not accept blame for doing anything wrong here. It seems that some academics do not understand the sources of information and have failed to keep up with the way archaeology works. Not our problem.
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Steven