25th July 2014, 05:44 PM
Hi Marc,
I'm not picking on the self-employed - I'm one of that rank myself! Since I don't want to lose money or find myself hoarding archives I make damned sure ALL my expected costs are in the quote I hand to a client. And if I don't think it can be estimated, I make sure they agree to pick up the tab as & when I finally have the numbers. If you get it in the contract, the developer winds up paying to give the stuff to the Nation!
As for the "not my responsibility" crap, if I really felt that way I wouldn't take on a job that destroyed the Nation's archaeological evidence in the first place! By digging it up, you DO have a moral obligation to disseminate - otherwise there are plenty of other non-destructive careers out there to choose from. Now I've met a few rum fellas out there, but by & large the bulk of archaeologists I know who are sitting on archives that haven't been deposited/disseminated are decent folks doing so through sheer difficulty of getting things completed, or because of unfortunate cock-ups that leave them without the money to do the right thing.
I'm not picking on the self-employed - I'm one of that rank myself! Since I don't want to lose money or find myself hoarding archives I make damned sure ALL my expected costs are in the quote I hand to a client. And if I don't think it can be estimated, I make sure they agree to pick up the tab as & when I finally have the numbers. If you get it in the contract, the developer winds up paying to give the stuff to the Nation!
As for the "not my responsibility" crap, if I really felt that way I wouldn't take on a job that destroyed the Nation's archaeological evidence in the first place! By digging it up, you DO have a moral obligation to disseminate - otherwise there are plenty of other non-destructive careers out there to choose from. Now I've met a few rum fellas out there, but by & large the bulk of archaeologists I know who are sitting on archives that haven't been deposited/disseminated are decent folks doing so through sheer difficulty of getting things completed, or because of unfortunate cock-ups that leave them without the money to do the right thing.