23rd March 2011, 12:04 PM
I think the industry has been moving towards larger organised units for years now and in any commercial environment, one could argue that this is a form of natural selection. In a sense- from corner shop to Tesco. A "one-stop shop" approach to archaeology and built heritage is surely to be an attractive hook for existing and potential clients. Having worked for a range of units over the years-I have only worked for large organisations in the commercial world on three occasions. In general, the `in-house` approach to methodologies allowed for a greater scope of investigative practise and in my view, a large organised unit with plenty of built-in specialisms meant that we could do far more justice to the archaeology on site. The final publications resulting from the fieldwork were also of a far higher standard. If we are (to stick to the thread) to question or assess the validity or justification of the launch of MetroMola........ here`s my penny`worth:
There is plenty of room in the marketplace for another large and organised unit and frankly-I`m surprised that Molas didn`t do this a long time ago. With years of experience up to their dangly bits in complex and deeply stratified single-context sites, MetroMola are a welcome newcomer to an industry where single context excavation systems are either largely misunderstood or exist in mythological legend. Whilst a goodly few units can have a good crack at single context excavation and do a good job at it, there are plenty of units out there where the mere mention of the system has directors in tears. If we are to be honest, a good proportion of units and archaeologists rarely (if ever) employ single context systems and arguably-such systems are the bread and butter of Mola staff. There`s a USP worth having if ever I`ve seen one. I`ve been on many a site that desperately needed a single context approach and on some where the brief actually demanded it-only to be confronted with a director who thought that he/she could circumvent that by employing evauation techniques. Site gets trashed but hey ho.....time and money was saved. Ended up pulling my own face off in frustration. Regardless of whether rampant capitalism or conspiratorial reptilian overlords are involved-the bottom line for me is this........I`ve been sat on my arse unemployed for 13 hideous weeks now and any new enterprise on the market is more than welcome.
There is plenty of room in the marketplace for another large and organised unit and frankly-I`m surprised that Molas didn`t do this a long time ago. With years of experience up to their dangly bits in complex and deeply stratified single-context sites, MetroMola are a welcome newcomer to an industry where single context excavation systems are either largely misunderstood or exist in mythological legend. Whilst a goodly few units can have a good crack at single context excavation and do a good job at it, there are plenty of units out there where the mere mention of the system has directors in tears. If we are to be honest, a good proportion of units and archaeologists rarely (if ever) employ single context systems and arguably-such systems are the bread and butter of Mola staff. There`s a USP worth having if ever I`ve seen one. I`ve been on many a site that desperately needed a single context approach and on some where the brief actually demanded it-only to be confronted with a director who thought that he/she could circumvent that by employing evauation techniques. Site gets trashed but hey ho.....time and money was saved. Ended up pulling my own face off in frustration. Regardless of whether rampant capitalism or conspiratorial reptilian overlords are involved-the bottom line for me is this........I`ve been sat on my arse unemployed for 13 hideous weeks now and any new enterprise on the market is more than welcome.