P Prentice Wrote:you couldnt be more wrong. most units are run as business and most are pretty ruthless when it comes to achieving their target share of the market. expansion is the name of the game and cheap diggers are the tools of our trade.
being undercut by one-man bands and new start-ups remains a major concern for many businesses as small jobs keep staff busy in between bigger ones and if you loose too many small ones your new start-up just get bigger and take your medium sites as well.
being quick and efficient can often make a differnence but price remains king
I'm with PP on this. Never came across a client that was happy for prices to go up.
My worry about the cowboys is any idiot can claim to be an archaeologist, watch a 360 remove a roman fort, then write a report saying there was no archaeology there. Or even say, hey I'll do that job for half the price, ignore the important difficult archaeology, don't do any analysis, radiocarbon dates etc and don't publish or archive the results and seem to get away scott free.
Both have happened in my experience, and many other examples. The clients can refuse to pay for post-ex and get away with it. County archaeologists over-ruled by planning officers and/or councilors. Big business can lean on any county quite effectively using the threat of pulling out of the development or even threatening officers with court actions.
Being efficient is always key, but too much haste and you've lost your chance to sample those preserved mesolithic layers in that peat bog, or those nearly invisible burials in the middle of your round barrows, or those cut into the ditches, or those preserved early prehistoric landscapes hidden under peat, alluvium and estuarine silts (Holderness).
I have also seen shockingly under-dug features in photographs in fancy publications. The experienced know that on many sites the very visible upper fill in say barrow ditches or graves cut into chalk/gravel is just the start of the story. How many features filled with re-deposited natural have been missed and destroyed in the rush to get it done quick.
By all means, sites need to be cleared quick if there isn't much there. But when there is stuff there, care and time is essential.
Oh and absolutely evaluation should be pre-planning. It is often the case on many jobs we get, but some clients do like to try and get some cowboy consultant to write a report underestimating the archaeological potential, try to get it passed by the overworked planning departments and hence get out of doing any archaeology.