26th August 2012, 04:17 PM
At the moment the way commercial archaeology is curated results in a staggering waste of resources - there are an awful lot of jobs where you know before setting foot on the site that either there isn't going to be any archaeology, or if there is then for a variety of practical reasons (eg. unshored narrow deep trenches that can't be examined or recorded) you ain't gonna be able to do anything useful , and has anyone ever in the history of archaeology found anything useful by monitoring telegraph poles being put up? Would make far more sense if the client in those situations could make a nominal 'donation' to a central fund and have the job written-off, and the funds spent on something slightly more archaeologically useful?
Personally I'd much rather go back to centrally funded archaeology (don't tell my management) - bring back the CEU and county-based council-run units, that all seemed to work fine last time around, and at least some local knowledge was occasionally deployed avoiding the regular farces that keep resulting from 'outside' outfits poaching jobs in unfamiliar territory - suspect for legal reasons I can't describe the latest c***-up that's just come to my attention (while writing-up all the features we've dug in a field which apparently according to the ES for a proposed development 'has little archaeological potential' - no, probably not to a unit who's nearest office is 150 miles away....)
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People have been asking for over 30 years in my own personal experience what exactly the point of university 'training' digs is..... :face-stir:
Personally I'd much rather go back to centrally funded archaeology (don't tell my management) - bring back the CEU and county-based council-run units, that all seemed to work fine last time around, and at least some local knowledge was occasionally deployed avoiding the regular farces that keep resulting from 'outside' outfits poaching jobs in unfamiliar territory - suspect for legal reasons I can't describe the latest c***-up that's just come to my attention (while writing-up all the features we've dug in a field which apparently according to the ES for a proposed development 'has little archaeological potential' - no, probably not to a unit who's nearest office is 150 miles away....)
! People have been asking for over 30 years in my own personal experience what exactly the point of university 'training' digs is..... :face-stir: