Standard and guidance for archaeological advice by historic environment services

[Jack]

And so the grand plan of the IFA is revealed.

Just as.......... when the armies of the empire take off in their destroyers to quell the so-called separatist uprising it was only those with foresight that could see the hand of the sith behind these events and the upcoming fall of freedom.

I object in every way possible to the IFA's suggestion that LPA's restrict archaeological work to companies in their club. For that is all an RO is.

I agree with the earlier comments that ISO or similar IMPARTIAL accreditation is the only way forward.
A proven history of competent work should also factor into the equation
But measures not to restrict fledgling companies should also exist.

Down with the RO scheme!

If archaeology wants to be see as a serious industry, lets be serious about it!

[Dinosaur]

I don't have any problem with that Gwyl and I am sure you are perfectly competent to do what you do. The problem I (and several other people) have with this proposal is that YOU might be excluded from doing work for which you are qualified and competent on the basis of whether or not you or your employer pays a subscription fee. Not from any fair test of competence or qualification.

Well put. And until IFA can demonstrate that all ROs are 'better' than all non-ROs, which is currently not even remotely the case, they should really shut up and wind their necks in about RO-status = competence

- we all know of ROs out there who produce s**t work, I've certainly seen plenty

[Unitof1]

monitoring guarantees YOUR work, at the end of the day

no it doesnt. The only thing that monitoring can do is find fault with my quarrentte. wats the point of haveing a code of conduct,being a memeber,if actually its only after the job is monitered where the client can work out if its been done too "standard" what ever that is?

then an HER-type search, and some form of monitoring also, is mandatory, i believe

believe mandatory as much as you like, theres not a single bit of stutory evidence that it is mandatory, it just a working practise thats evloved with TCPA in some authorities but not all. God knows what an HER is- some remanant of an ordanace survey index (which the ordance survey should still be keeping). Is an HER a museum? I still dont understand how something thats been recorded in another place can affect the product of an evaluation.

What field archaeologists need is an institute for field archaeologists and no bloody body else.

[tmsarch]

Well put. And until IFA can demonstrate that all ROs are 'better' than all non-ROs, which is currently not even remotely the case, they should really shut up and wind their necks in about RO-status = competence

:face-approve:not just demonstrate that they are better - the IfA also needs to prove that it can be trusted to take robust action against it's members/organisations that fail to meet the standards. Although the IfA would like to argue otherwise, my experience is of an organisation that is toothless and all too keen to roll over.

[gwyl]

i don't care who provides standards for curators - just as in principle i don't care who provides standards for ALL archaeologists, commercial, academic or amateur. but standards are a must, now. i've dealt with legacy sites and dead archives and it is apparent that the level of quality of work is constantly subject to external constraints, be it skills or funding or interest in the site.

if the IfA want to do it, in the absence of EH or some other state body, so be it. (Personally a national licence for all practioners is my preference). I agree that the proposal as it stands needs work. how many people writing about how bad it is actually commented during the consultation period?

what i have a problem with is a free for all approach. sites don't get written up,. people carry out unnecessary work, people fail to carry out necessary work. furthermore, curators across the country have a variety of approaches which are sometimes inconsistent and are occasionally frustrating for their high-handeedness, other times extremely effective and forethoughtful. best practice needs transparency and agreed common standards. we all know of sites that have been bollixed by poor curator handling, poor excavation, or poor writing up. and as for the shnky archives that are depsoited by some within the profession...

course, the best way for the IfA not to represent you is to stand apart and wave a fist shouting you don't and you'll never represent me; clearly the Groucho Marx approach has its supporters, but i can't quite see the point of tarring everyone who gets involved with the brush of co-option. it's a bit like calling everyone in a union a communist. lots of people getting involved and figthing might however have a positive outcome for the majority, which are the least well-paid.

but to return to the point in case, the way things are at the moment, without common standards, the quality of archaeology at a county level is not the same. some places have implemented HLCs etc. others don't see the point, but this shows up when carrying out DBAs or other work which sits on county borders. equally monitoring can be a phone call or can be almost a job interview; this is a system like so much in this country open to abuse, which everyone subsequently turns round open-mouthed and gasps 'how could this happen so, in such a world-class economy?'

(and i don't believe in only ROs working in the profession either, just in case someone out there thinks i do... the licence system should be tied the individual and their ability to complete projects to an appropriate standard)

@Unit: the TCPA only applies in the UK, i think you'll find. As you raised the idea of people coming into the UK to carry out archaeology, i thought i'd just point out that elsewhere in Europe an HER type system is in operation. and some form of monitoring is built into the process of archaeological works. I think most foreign archaeologists would be up to speed on the concept. the UK is not a special case. i'm afraid that you'll need to rephrase some of your other comments as i can't understand you.

[Unitof1]

IfA also needs to prove that it can be trusted to take robust action against
it's members/organisations that fail to meet the standards

fail to meet what standard and what robus action should be taken? As far as I am concerned the biggest issue that rose out of the rescue days is that archaeology was being destroyed by development without the chance of it being recorded. As far as I am concerned it still is and that the central issus is to try and get an archaeologist, any bloody archaeologist in on the ground. Instead the industry wants to turn itself into that person is not up to "standard" and is a crap archaeologist who needs momnitoring or must work for a company that needs monitoring. From my point of view a crap archaeologist is better than no archaeologist, that includes someone who goes to a watching brief and stays in the car all day (the reason being that it should have been an evaluation and then archaeologists would have struggled to have stayed in the car).

Lets say it again- all planning applications should provided archaeological consideration and that consideration should be provided by anybody calling themselves an archaeologist and if anybody else thinks that the consideration is inadequate they should say so in the planning consultaion period to the planning authority. Obviously I will make the little old ladies undertake very inexpensive evaluations.

[Unitof1]

what i have a problem with is a free for all approach.

I dont really care what other archaeologists do with their sites. I suppose that its a bit of a shame if they dont get a silly little one line in a journal or something but if nobody is going to pay for the product like the museums I cant see that it matters.

[Dinosaur]

i've dealt with legacy sites and dead archives and it is apparent that the level of quality of work is constantly subject to external constraints, be it skills or funding or interest in the site.

Good comment. I also seem to spend a lot of time dealing with old stuff, much of which is at least as good as most modern product. The more youthful end of the profession seem to have had it drummed into them at some point in Uni that modern excavation is somehow better than in the 'bad old days' - actually from what I've witnessed over the last 30 years or so standards have plummetted, largely, as you point out, because no one has the time to do anything properly any more. Unfortunately this seems to include basics like learning to dig. There's a culture these days that a good digger is one who produces a neat-looking half-sectioned posthole (whether it's right or not), takes a really bad and unuseable photo, does some rather average drawings, fills in the context sheet neatlly and in all the boxes (whether what's written is garbage or not) and gets onto the next one before tea-break. Sadly a chimp can do that (and probably with a similar number of paw-prints all over the archive). Had first-hand experience of this last year on a tricky gravel site where it was rapidly abundantly clear that most of the (on paper) highly experienced workforce had absolutely no idea what they were doing digging stuff that didn't have nice soily fills. No one was even prepared to touch some of the gravel-filled features! The only people on site who had the faintest were, with one exception (Rich, you're a star), all of the 40-something (ok, 50-something) pre-commercial generation. Makes you weep....

[gwyl]

I dont really care what other archaeologists do with their sites. I suppose that its a bit of a shame if they dont get a silly little one line in a journal or something but if nobody is going to pay for the product like the museums I cant see that it matters.

it's hardly worth doing archaeology in that case; notwithstanding the opportunity to cover oneself in glory, the main idea of a silly little one line is so that your peers have some comparative data there on paper in the Borsetshire Antiquities Journal, rather than trying to google HER and constantly getting http://girlvspig.com/ and wondering what the fuss is all about, when it's not even as good as http://conormchale.blogspot.com/ for archaeology...

onwards and upwards...

the real problem, imo, with the legacy jobs is that what i think is not alwways what the original excavator thought, and how to reconcile the two, when the data is missing, cos that wasn't of interest, but quality of work is frequently better. at least there's rarely colluvium on top of hills, and sections, which even if they don't explicitly show recuts etc. are well drawn enough that one can infer successfully. and do not have those floaters in the middle of the cut, touching nothing, like a stargate into another archaeology...

[Dinosaur]

Don't mention Stargates! You know it always sets Jack off..... (I've got all the complete box sets so I've reached an equilibrium of sorts...)

I know this is probably going back further than you mean (or maybe not), but those much-maligned watercolours in old reports often convey far, far more useful information than more recent monochrome photographs and even 'technical' drawings - the added '3D' can considerably add to understanding of what's going on (particularly since, inevitably, the illustration was subjective/interpretive). Hence drawing finds rather than just photographing them, the drawings are to some extent (varying with the skill of the illustrator) subjective. There were some advantages to the old-style one-person-writes-all-the-records as well (assuming they were any good), at least it was all coming from the same hymn-sheet and everything was recorded in the same way...its a right b***er trying to do report illustrations of, say, 15 postholes that have all been drawn by different people with different ideas of how to draw (or not draw) rocks.....