18th September 2013, 05:33 PM
Jack Wrote:Its far better for everyone involved to avoid significant archaeology under a commercial project.
Stuff gets missed, lost and destroyed; whether its during assessment, mitigation recommendations, sample excavation strategies and definitely during watching briefs. And don't get me started on recording large complicated sites in a thin pipe-trench width excavation.
it is far better for the resource and for archaeological theory if it is undertaken as a commercial venture. no university can undertake the kind of projects we do. they do not have our funding and they do not have (with a few notable exceptions with commercial units) have our skills. i know for a fact that some of the leading academics have on record that given their time again they would be in commercial archaeology because that is where the best research is undertaken. the major drawback is that inadequate work is permitted, mainly because the lowest tender still rules, but often because there is nobody in place to recognise the neccessity or the opportunity to push for the best possible. we all know that a vast amount of mitigation is crap and that far too much effort is spent on the least return, such as watching briefs on pipe trenches
and now dinosaur will tell us how brilliant he is -
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers