8th July 2013, 09:09 PM
Dinosaur Wrote:Why not? Thats the whole point of commercial archaeology, to make money. Its just that one group of money-makers are attempting to unilaterally restrict the rights of the rest to do the same in an open and competative environment, tender by tender. If they're so good they shouldn't be scared of the competition
You do seem to have quite a confused set of ideas. One minute berating the 9 to 5ers 'only in interested in it because it's a job' the next claiming that all commercial archaeologists are interested in is making money. How very contradictory.
Of course, there are different ways of protecting your position both personally and as an organisation: restricting access to the trade based on membership of a professional body (the intention, whether true or not, to restrict it only to those who are judged by their peers to be capable), and doing it be crapping all over your junior staff by issuing appalling contracts etc etc and thus making sure you win work but at the same time restrict access to new people (by either putting them off entirely or suggesting they not be kept on because they, for example, had the film speed on the camera set to 1000 rather that 250), and keep the jobs for a select few. I'm sure there are other ways but those are two that spring to mind. If you can manage to both of these things you might actually be able to make a profit in commercial archaeology.