22nd August 2011, 08:57 AM
My issue with the wish for quality archaeology is severalfold - you can't dictate what will turn up, it's entirely relative depending on what you find interesting and where you are working, and it is therefore unquantifiable. At least wages and conditions can be controlled in some meaningful sense. How happy would people be if they had decent archaeology but no idea what their pay or hours were going to be one week to the next? I also worry that it makes archaeologists sound like spoilt brats - they are doing a job that many people think sounds fantastic anyway (compared to their 'mundane' employment) and then people complain that the quality of the archaeology isn't good enough. Give me a break! Do people realise how insulting that is to someone who does a genuinely grim job on poor wages?