25th July 2011, 12:37 PM
P Prentice Wrote:you know where the answer lies marcus - but i dont know why you resist
Sorry to disabuse you, but I don't know where the answer lies - perhaps you could explain?
I think you make a good point that most diggers wouldn't care who they were working for if the pay and conditions were appropriate, but as long as there's one company out there that is willing to undercut, everyone else is forced to one extent or another to try to reduce costs to win work. While there will always be a limited number of developers willing to pay more for a quality product, or to consistently use a contractor they've work with in the past because they know said contractor does a good job, in most cases the decision as to which archaeologist is appointed is based solely or wholly on cost. The only way to take the possibility of undercutting out of the equation would be to remove archaeology from the commercial sphere altogether, possibly by a system of state or council-funded regional excavation units. While I'm not adverse to this as an ideal, realistically it's not going to happen any time soon, as neither national or local government will have the money to create such a system. That being the case, there's always going to be the possibility of being undercut by someone tendering deliberately low to win the job
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum