14th February 2014, 07:37 PM
Speaking as a completelty superflous consultant who has never brought any benefit to either clients or field archaeologists and merely pilfered large sums off the top of development projects, I have to say that I completely agree with GK's final comment about public service archaeologists.
Whilst I have to admit to being fairly ambivalent about the idea of Chartered or non-Chartered archaeologists and also about uber-units vs. local expertise, I do think that the pressure on the provision of development control archaeologists represents the greatest threat to standards of archaeology (ceertainly in England). Whilst I have never worked in the public sector, I have regular contact with a great many development control archaeologists and much respect for most of them. I remember saying previosuly on this forum that the best thing for standards of archaeology in England would be to make these posts statutory and increase the pay by at least 100% across the board (yes -even for the slightly duff ones). If I was in charge of archaeology in this country that would be my first move (although as a consultant I would need to cream at least 10% off the pay increase) - perhaps this is something that Chartered Archaeologists could campaign for.
Beamo
Whilst I have to admit to being fairly ambivalent about the idea of Chartered or non-Chartered archaeologists and also about uber-units vs. local expertise, I do think that the pressure on the provision of development control archaeologists represents the greatest threat to standards of archaeology (ceertainly in England). Whilst I have never worked in the public sector, I have regular contact with a great many development control archaeologists and much respect for most of them. I remember saying previosuly on this forum that the best thing for standards of archaeology in England would be to make these posts statutory and increase the pay by at least 100% across the board (yes -even for the slightly duff ones). If I was in charge of archaeology in this country that would be my first move (although as a consultant I would need to cream at least 10% off the pay increase) - perhaps this is something that Chartered Archaeologists could campaign for.
Beamo