9th November 2009, 10:28 AM
Vulpes Wrote:Fair point Red Earth about the possible impact of the associated costs, but improving working practice in one area needn't drag another down. This is akin to the classic CBI opposition to Health and Safety and other forms of regulation as being bad for business.
Lonnie Donegan is the poor bloke whose song you sampled
I'm still not happy with your take on Joe Public's interest in archaeology stopping at shiny things. Aren't most people interested in other people - past and present? If we can't make archaeology interesting and relevant to the wider public why should anyone - let alone developers spend any money on it? However much we agree, you do have me confused here.
The potential difficulty I can see in terms of cost is that developers might not object too much to spending money on paying for outreach as, after all, it is potentially great advertising. But add that on to the cost of the archaeological work too and they might start calling for concessions somewhere to remove the 'burden'. At present, of course, this sort of public involvement does happen anyway where the developer is forward thinking enough to realise that it is a good thing but this is often on a fairly ad hoc and casual basis. If it became a rock solid requirement I'm not sure where it might lead, although it would be great if if happened.
Does that mean I owe Lonnie some money?
The public must be remarkably different where you are to everywhere else in the country. The public I'm thinking of are fairly ordinary people with some interest in archaeology, but are largely only bothered if it is particularly exciting or shiny. The same people who watch Antiques Roadshow only to see how much things are, who vote on X Factor, and who made the recent Anglo Saxon treasure story the lead item on the BBC website. Many archaeologists are essentially the same. Don't tell me your first thought on seeing that treasure wasn't 'ooooh, shiny!'
Obviously this is a gross generalisation, and I can't remember what we were even discussing now, but it does have an impact on how you determine what is of public interest, which is very difficult to judge. I would feel a bit embarrassed organising some outreach/public activity at the client's expense on the basis that the site is 'archaeologically really interesting', only for no-one to turn up.