6th November 2009, 05:39 PM
Vulpes Wrote:I thought this thread was about the PPS, not levels of pay in archaeology. But don't give up the day job - you're clearly not the next Lonnie Donegan
I wasn't trying to say that the public would necessarily be interested in 'the minutiae of academic debate'. But I would agree with Oxbeast in that 'Probably any archaeology which has gone through pre-application determination, evaluation and onto excavation is going to be interesting to the public.'
The parallels with road-building and geotechnical work were frankly really strained and you seemed to be stretching the point somewhat.
In terms of your question: 'How do you decide what might be of interest to the public, what form does it take etc?'
Why is this a minefield? and why should it be so difficult for the archaeological community to address? It's not as if there are no examples of publicly engaged archaeology to draw on in the development or voluntary sectors. The PPS etc merely seeks to build upon the good work that has already been done elsewhere and under the existing PPG. The difference now being that public engagement is actually in there. Some bad thing?
Vulpes Wrote:David - I'm not sure that Red Earth was agreeing with me, even in broad terms- Just saying you do isn't enough! Glad you're keeping count though.
My point would be that this particular element of the (nearly) new regime should be viewed as an opportunity not an obstacle.
I don't know who Lonnie Donegan is.
I would like to think that all of these things connected to levels of pay at, some level but I'm not obsessed by it. At the end of the day though, the quality of work (and therefore the ability of people to translate it into something worth telling the public about) is arguably connected pay and conditions. The only reason I mentioned it really was because of a concern that the need to include outreach in the budget, another unwated cost to some developers, might impact in other areas.
The academic aspect of this whole discussion really has little bearing on it. Most people would come to hear about/visit/read about a site because it had nice exiting looking things on it - not because it furthered the understanding of middle saxon pottery production in the area around...
I'm also not saying it is impossible to work out what form of public involvement will be appropriate for each case, only that it will be difficult to determine until potentially very late in the day and the practicalities will be tricky, at least intially.
I do agree that it is an opportunity, but that there are obstacles that might need to be overcome to achieve the best results.
I do agree with you. Unfortunately the nature of a online forum is that it's content is typed, on a keyboard. Now, a keyboard is a wonderful invention, but it is incapable of transferring the additional meaning that, say, a face to face conversation can. Even if I type really hard. Which means that just saying that I agree with you is all I can do - I am attempting to transmit the notion that this is genuinely what I think, but I'm not sure it is working.