8th November 2013, 11:02 PM
P Prentice Wrote:reading your recent posts i am left with the impression that you have not bothered to read the ifa literature. i dont know anybody who thinks it is perfect or cant be improved but i do know that most of its membership, at every level, care about their profession. a few might well care about money and prestige but they are a minority. most in senior positions (contracting) spent their time at the coal face and most worked very hard to get where they are. most in entry level positions have ambition to rise within the profession and do research. some are happy just digging up interesting shit. most people in the profession deserve to be paid more and have better job prospects, better terms and conditions. a significant majority of professional archaeologists have joined together to try and do better. membership acting in the best interest of the membership is not a crime against non-members it is the basis of any democratic movement. carping on about legitimacy is frankly as ridiculous as impugning members for possibly not being the best practitioners as no other body has any measurable standards. ifa has 3000 voices and you have listened to how many?
OK, numerous points about that reply, so I'll be anal and number them...
- Thank you for what at last appears to be a genuine reply. Whether I agree or not, it at least appears to be an effort. Which is nice.
- No-one, as far as I have seen, questions whether the membership of the IfA cares about archaeology. What is being questioned is whether the membership is aware of what archaeology is to the majority of those who practice it.
- "most in entry level positions have ambition to rise within the profession and do research": that is rather loaded. The implication is that digging isn't research, but academia is. Research only comes from primary data, and that comes, on the whole, from people digging in the dirt. Now there is little doubt that a lot of diggers would also like the opportunity to explore their particular area more in an academic way. But that ain't going to happen because they'd also like to get paid. So, maybe one step forward would be to integrate academic archaeology more with commercial archaeology?
- Do we deserve better pay and conditions? See my reply above. But that depends vey much on things over which we appear to have little influence and voice. So, there's another way forward - promote archaeology to a wider audience so that people other than ourselves think that we deserve better.
- "a significant majority of professional archaeologists have joined together to try and do better." Again, questionable. I'd contend that the majority of professional commercial archaeologists haven't. See previous comments." membership acting in the best interest of the membership is not a crime against non-members it is the basis of any democratic movement. carping on about legitimacy is frankly as ridiculous as impugning members for possibly not being the best practitioners as no other body has any measurable standards." Totally agree with the first part, but... it's not reflected in reality. I work in commercial archaeology. Commercial archaeology employs somewhere in the region of half of all those under the archaeology umbrella? All those who I speak to who don't have an imposed imperative to be a member aren't. So, what is that telling us? (See also above...)
- Yet again, who says theirs are the best standards? Even with my limited experience I've seen things considered by some to be the accepted convention, but contribute nowt to our understanding. OK, I admit that some of that may be down to lack of knowledge and experience, but on the other hand, how much is down to 'we've done it this way since **** so that's how we do it'?