20th July 2011, 01:12 PM
It may be the case that community groups don't have any real interest in undertaking work on commercial development sites, but the important issue is not whether they do or don't, but that the government appears to be under the impression that they could. As was noted above, it serves to increase the perception held by the government, developers, and the public in general that we're all doing this as a hobby, leading the developer to ask why he should pay to get a professional archaeologist to undertake his evaluation when that nice local group will do it for nothing (and, incidentally, aren't there as a condition of planning consent, meaning that he can tell them to bugger off if it's taking too long). The danger for archaeology as a profession would seem to be that all archaeologists are viewed as wholly interchangeable, leading to a regression to the pre-NPPG days of volunteers doing a few days recording on a development site only if the owner allows them access.
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum