18th February 2014, 06:57 PM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:I wouldn't admit that at all. I assumed Mike T to be referring to the lowest grade of archaeological assistant on any site and not taking in to account supervisors, assistant supervisors, finds and environmental staff, project officers, site directors, surveyors, photographers etc etc.
I am sure that the majority of IfA members have some direct connection with field work. It would be a mistake to assume that those who get the wettest and dirtiest, valuable though they are, make up the only members of our profession who directly interface with the resource.....
So the people above, myself included, are either lying or deluded when we say that we know of next to no field staff who are even interested in being members of the IfA? And in my admittedly brief experience that includes supervisors, POs, photographers (who tend to be as much the 'lowest grade' as anyone else), finds and environmental staff... We're mad to suggest that a percentage of the membership may be there purely because they feel they have to be? That another percentage of the membership may not in fact have much contact with archaeology at all? This really gets to the nub of the problem - from our point of view the IfA is irrelevant and possibly living in an alternative universe, to the IfA's point of view, everything is fine and absolute membership numbers count for everything rather than numbers who actively support them, that it's our fault if we don't feel they're of benefit to us rather than theirs for not even attempting to understand the concerns and issues. Maybe that's the problem with having a group, pretty much self-elected and self-perpetuating, in a monopoly position.
Time for me to bow out of this discussion, file it under Ivory Towers Syndrome - Of No Direct Relevance, and continue enjoying my job.