Is the time right to sort out pay and conditions?

[PhaseSI]

Surely the main point of evaluation is to aid the curator (and ultimately the planning authority) in deciding upon the proposed impact of development on the archaeological resource and thereafter to devise appropriate forms of mitigation...at the point of 'evaluation', cost is largely irrelevant

Fair point. Cost considerations aside if a project goes to strip and record before any evaluation and archaeology of national importance turns up then what happens. Is it too late to preserve it? We've had geophysics sites where we have turned up very significant archaeology that there was no previous evidence for. A couple that spring to mind are one very large site (200 ha) where the archaeology was so extensive and potentially important that the proposed development was stopped and another where we turned up a possible henge on a site that had been parkland for a couple of hundred years and then relatively recently turned to 'rough' ground. No 'evidence' prior to our geophysics of any archaeology within the site, let alone something of potential significance. Any evaluation that did not include geophysics would probably not have found these or allowed their significance to be put into context.

But I've got involved in another digression from the original topic. Is it the right time to sort out pay and conditions. Not sure if its a better or worse time that at any other point. But fundamentally if your working conditions are poor and you are not happy with the level of pay then work somewhere else.