25th September 2008, 05:45 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by gorilla
If academics (mainly) are writing this stuff and identifying the gaps, why aren't they pushing for the work to get done? Is it a lack of interest, lack of funding or, dare I say it, it's just that academics have become parochial. Sometimes, it appears (to me) that research is geared towards what each individual academic wants, rather than to general questions that should be answered. Does the majority of research funding go to an academics 'pet' project (more-often-than-not a sciency one), or to ones that are deemed 'sexy archaeology'? Some of the best PhD topics (and students) don't get any funding at all, whilst some of the worst do.
I think the key issue here is how postgraduate research and research in general is funded. Our research council, the AHRC, is one of the least funded research councils, compared to Industry, chemistry, physics and global environmental research we are but tiny. Not helped that £5million of ring-fenced funding was taken off the AHRC last year to bail out the Rover collapse (the figure in ESRC, and NERC were much higher, reflecting their bigge budgets, which in turn reflects the massive costs in undertaking scientific research at a global standard)...anyway...axe-ground to a Neolithic standard.
The funders of research will in general have their own agendas/quotas to fill. For example last year you could get many thousands of pounds to examine contemporary dance, but you would get hee-haw if you wanted to examine an archaeological site utilising environmental methods. This focus changes every year or so, but I fear not if you want to involve archaeological science anywhere in a proposal except in the vaguest terms...personal experience here, still bitter
Therefore for academics to get grants, the EU, research coucils and other smaller bodies have agendas/hoops academics need to jump through, which does ultimately affect the research questions that are formulated. Plus, funding bodies love "inter-disciplinary" research, which can often mean compromising with other non-archaeological depts on research topics, and or working internationally therefore not contributing to the British record.
Another issue is that archaeological science is not in the remit of any Research council. AHRC don't like it, and NERC don't accept applications, they deal out the cash on a completely different basis.
In order to remain well- (or ok-)funded, a top-level research dept must maintain a 5-rating in the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) that happens every few years. A university will slash a depts funding if it falls below 5, this is what happened at a certain Scottish dept in the last few years, and its resources have declined significantly, merging, loss of buildings all sorts of problems - they do recover though
. This is another pressure that drives research...to continue being funded, research of an international level must be maintained across the board...stress, stress, stress. This obviously doesn't mean that local/regional British archaeology isn't worth looking at, it just means that research is becoming increasingly controlled by these issues, rather than what people actually want to study or would be useful. Unless it can be published in peer-reviewed, significant journals for example, the time and effort needed to fund a project makes anything less than that unlikely. This is partly down to the unique way in which universities are funded, and mostly because like hospitals there is an army of bureaucrats managing the hell out of everything (2 for every academic in my uni,just in case we do something worth any money it seems )...there is an agenda everywhere.Obviously there are depts that don't go for research in such a big way as others and are centres of teaching excellence, but then they won't have budgets for research on the scale as others etc etc so personal interests may dominate here.
I fear that as always, funding is the driving factor.
Phew...B)