IFA RO only as approved contractors

[Marcus Brody]

Marcus, that is a false dichotomy: you get the letters by demonstrating that you do a a good job. If we care about the archaeological resource, we should be willing to accept that we need more than just people's own opinion that they are competent before being let loose on it?

I realise that I have no way of proving this as it's purely based on personal experience, but over the last 15 years I've come across a huge number of people with the letters 'IfA' after their name who appear to be borderline incompetent on site, and yet who seem to progress through the IfA grades regardless. Conversely, some of the best archaeologists I've worked for / with haven't been in the club, so I wouldn't accept that signing up is any kitemark of quality. Indeed, as has been pointed out by others, there's a perception that IfA disciplinary procedures are applied so rarely, inconsistently and opaquely that they don't really act as any sort of brake on poor work, and that actually the responsibility for ensuring that work is carried out to a reasonable standard falls on curators. Simply saying that only RAOs are allowed to undertake archaeological work won't change that.

Marcus, even if you feel you have to 'f**k off to another career', unless you're planning to make a life's work of stacking shelves in T*sco you'll still end up having to join a professional body to get anywhere. They might be better organised and stronger but it's still the same.

Well, that's self-evidently not true, I've been lucky enough to have had a decent career in archaeology without joining the IfA. Sure,while there may be some professions where it's considered necessary or advantageous to join a professional body, there are plenty of jobs other than shelf-stacking where you can make a living without needing to be a member of an institute. As I said above, if it were to become a hard-and-fast requirement that I had to be in the IfA to carry on doing my job, I probably would have to sign up, but I'd be very uncomfortable with being forced to join.

If the work's been conditioned then they could refuse to sign it off, or hint that it won't be if something isn't done.

Absolutely right, but there's no reason why the company concerned being a member of the IfA would make any difference to that process. The curator could refuse to sign off on work done by RAOs as easily as non-RAOs, and the fact that one company was a member of the club while the other wasn't would make no material difference