you cant sell what nobody wants

[Marc Berger]

You sound like you want to keep all those bags of smashed up bone and pot yourself? Hope you've got a big shed

I have four sheds! Had five but one burnt down. Opps.:face-kiss: You could call them your reference collection.

Surely, as a self-employed bod, it is y[B]our [/B]responsibility to ensure your original tender included the cost of creating/storing/providing copies of the archive? If not, WHY not?

Barking why you picking on us self employed? Seems to me there was a time when an archaeologists was employed as a public servant which kinda ment that all they produced was automatically archived in the museum who took ownership. In return for their reports and for their archive they were paid a salary. Not sure what bit of salary paid for what bit of archaeologing they did or which education or heritage or planning budget paid for which bit but I cant see if it was worth archiving that that the archaeologist wasn't paid for their archive and for their reports and for doing the field work and for all the other things that they did. And then for some reason field archaeologists got too expensive to be public servants and were cast out into the wilderness. I wonder what turned out after time to be the too expensive bit?

So, there's no reason why anyone should have their archive "taken off them" without appropriate compensation - it's just up to you to make sure it was in the tender costs in the first place. The only difference here is that an employee gets their cash in guaranteed amounts at timely intervals, while a canny self-employed archaeologist has to submit an invoice after doing the work...

So what your saying Barking is that in the tender a value for the archaeology to be archived should be assessed and for which the archaeologist should seek recompense? My local museum seems to be charging for having ownership of the archive by the size of box at the moment. Is it that I should charge the client my expected after retirement costs as well as the total cost to produce the archaeology (time in the field, petrol to site....)but in virtual box units and add these to the expected number of actual boxes with a bit of contingency that will be required and charge this to the client but tell them that its actual archiving costs. Is that legal or ethical?

I really don't see why it is my responsibility, if the museum does not want to pay me for my archive, it does not want my archive. I am quite happy not to burden them with my grotty bits of sherds and bone frags. In fact I save myself the expense of giving my archive to them. It feels like a no brainer, might be something to do with my lack of religion but I have searched every hair on the palm of my hand and I cannot find where it says "my responsibility is".

Or do you just hope to get hand-outs?

Not I want society to take its share of the costs of archaeology which would make them responsible in the granting of development permissions which lead to the destruction of archaeology. As it stand the society that we live in has kicked out of the temple the archaeologists and still expects to rely on economic growth based on infrastructure schemes to pay its costs. There is nothing in the environmental polluter payback authorising authority system to make the people granting permissions to have to worry about the affect on their own budgets. It would be a significant statement if the curators were saying to the planning commitees look this scheme is going to cost £10000 to produce the archaeology and we will have to find another £10000 to buy the archaeology and then pay for it to be kept in a nice shinny museum. Obviously at £10000 I am not talking about significant archaeology but I bet that there would be a conservation affect on the planners. Look at it another way museums become a valued asset, councils might be able to borrow money against them to give shelter to the homeless. Obviously they would be advised to undertake an evaluation before seeking permission....

Of course you add them to the tender

I have only been involved three times in tenders. The first was some government pfi scheme and there was two units and little old me asked along for a site visit. Odd, it was very short notice, like the day before. I put my only suit on. They had had tenders for the deskbased, tenders for the evaluation and this was tenders for the excavation. The first unit said to the second unit who had done the desk based and the evaluation that the only reason they had come was because they were the ex-county unit and did not expect to get the job as this was just a procedural thing where the developer/consultants needed three quotes and then they looked at me and although they did not laugh in my face you could feel the warmth. Strange thing was that when I was leaving I was asked if I had any expenses that I wanted to claim. I was a bit taken aback and said as I was local that a fiver for petrol would cover it. About two weeks later the very same thing happened but this time after nobody came and asked me for expenses and I had to walkabout asking all sorts of different people as to who claim my expenses from and I eventually got £25. For my last "invitation to tender" I asked for £100 up front to tender and got it, for basically walking around a bit of grass and I got the job! And then it was 2008 and I haven't had a sniff of a tender since. Has anybody got work off a tender recently?