10th November 2011, 06:11 PM
I'm aware that this is something that I've said several times on a number of different threads, but I've never really understood why local societies would be so keen to work on development sites. It seems to me that the big advantage societies / amateurs have is that they can pick a nice site (a cropmark or earthwork, for example), ask the landowner's permission, and then dig it, with a fair degree of confidence that they'll actually find something interesting. Meanwhile, most professional archaeologists only get to work in areas where development is happening, which may not be where the archaeology is!
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum