13th August 2010, 02:18 PM
(This post was last modified: 13th August 2010, 02:42 PM by archaeologistkarl.)
Archaeology is an immature i.e. young, under developed; industry similar to the 1920-1950 American aircraft industry. There are a load of small companies “even the largest companies in archaeology are medium size companies” trying to do small specialist jobs in archaeology today, in the 1920-1950 there where loads of American companies producing specialist planes some where like a little flash of light producing a very limited number of planes and dieing off from the lack of a target market. After World War II the companies which survived the 1920-1950 had loads of cash which lead to the post war consolidation of the market now there are three big companies all formed form buyout and mergers Boeing McDonnell Dougles, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman and all these firm had diversified there operations.
Archaeological firms need to remember that archaeology is a very specialist field, but the people how work in archaeology have a number of differing skills sets which can be applied in different sectors so when the digging dries up the companies have other sources of revenue. A case in hand is Boeing Mcdonnell Dougles has not had a major military contract in the last year so even though one of it main core industries is stalling Boeing is still making a profit. While I’m not suggesting that archaeological firms such even try these large multi national business models it is worth noting how they run and how it could be adapted into archaeology, could we soon see Wessex Archaeology not only providing archaeological evaluations but also designing Museum exhibitions? Not so far fetch as Wessex Archaeology will have a large graphics team, archivist.
Archaeological firms need to remember that archaeology is a very specialist field, but the people how work in archaeology have a number of differing skills sets which can be applied in different sectors so when the digging dries up the companies have other sources of revenue. A case in hand is Boeing Mcdonnell Dougles has not had a major military contract in the last year so even though one of it main core industries is stalling Boeing is still making a profit. While I’m not suggesting that archaeological firms such even try these large multi national business models it is worth noting how they run and how it could be adapted into archaeology, could we soon see Wessex Archaeology not only providing archaeological evaluations but also designing Museum exhibitions? Not so far fetch as Wessex Archaeology will have a large graphics team, archivist.