"Are Archaeologists Killing the Goose?" - A sign of things to come...

[kevin wooldridge]

Quite a few quarry works are small as they're likely to get quarry consent for small land parcels at a time and cannot garuntee that they'll get the next land parcel they apply for. I too have done an evaluation where the land parcel become nonviable.

But to offset this, most planning permissions for quarry works are for extended periods of time i.e 40 years + and surely the potential to adjust costs over the life of a quarry more than accounts for preliminary costs involved in archaeological survey or excavation. I mean any development where the archaeological costs have to be born upfront and before the development has reached a point where cash flow is generated, could argue that archaeological costs are excessive.....but as an overall charge to the development this would seldom reach the 1% level and often much, much less. I doubt very much whether the archeological costs of quarrying are anymore expensive if looked at over the lifetime of the quarry (including of course the premium if backfilling produces a source of income and of course the profits from final land disposal, after the landscape is restored).....

.....in fact there may be an argument that effective archaeological management could INCREASE the value of a quarry site i.e where a dormant quarry resource can be 'quickly' bought into operation at time of need, if all planning conditions relating to archaeological remains have been effected and/or where future land use/development can be undertaken without the necessity for archaeological intervention.