8th April 2005, 10:51 AM
Disappointed has hit the nail right on the head and represents the feelings of today?s archaeologist.
I have heard a lot of talk here over the last week much of it trustafarian "we have to do this rather than work for the man, have you seen my anti capitalism t-shirt, archaeology?s a way of life I love swampy" talk, which quite honestly never does us any favours on site. Certainly when the site engineers and architects etc see a bunch of pierced hippies with dreadlocks swanning around on site its a wonder why archaeology is in the state its in.
Yet even with all this fanciful talk and polls and IFA chat behind the scenes archaeology isn?t going to change. In the last five years nothing significant has changed I even went to Ireland to sample archaeology over there but to no avail and wrote about my experiences with M Gowan and Co in the Digger some time ago "Irish Nightmare".
As long as you have a group of people with a passion for something you have another group willing to take advantage of that.
And you! You know who you are. your all the managers/directors of the Units out there from A to Z who hold the personal responsibility for the state of archaeology in this country.
It?s not the legislation the ppgs and government help or hindrance, we could work with that and attempt to make change. Its about the conditions, the awful conditions Units, and every one of them is guilty, make us work in, all the poor pay and exploitation that quite frankly would land you court in the real working world. Why do we not complain! To the Unit don?t make me laugh we?d never dig again, blacklisted! Its a very small world this archaeology business.
Promotion laughable! Too many ivory towers have been built and god forbid someone should come up the ladder and threaten the position of some manager lacking in confidence. That?s were the being ignored on site stems from. Its a fear, its a fear of being discovered as underneath all that pomposity their just the same just as scared and insecure as everybody else in this awful business. So you?re all to blame Diggers to Unit directors. We should all take a go look at ourselves and put up or shut up.
I think at the end of the day we are all like heroin addicts trying to chase that first hit but never reaching it no matter how hard we try? And that first hit is this:
Its that barmy summer dig we all did at Uni when the wine was flowing and the erb was smellin fine and we all attempted to set the world to rights.. We didn?t care if we were getting paid coz we were archaeologists man! doing it all not for the money but for the love of it.
We were a happy few with another party filled year of uni to look forward to. We were all camped away in our little haven where the concerns of the world could not touch us for the few weeks we had. Our only concern was the steady supply of booze and puff and if we could get off with someone. Its this collection of emotions we continue to chase after we enter the real world of contract archaeology and for a time we think its everything we wanted? but only for a time?
I have heard a lot of talk here over the last week much of it trustafarian "we have to do this rather than work for the man, have you seen my anti capitalism t-shirt, archaeology?s a way of life I love swampy" talk, which quite honestly never does us any favours on site. Certainly when the site engineers and architects etc see a bunch of pierced hippies with dreadlocks swanning around on site its a wonder why archaeology is in the state its in.
Yet even with all this fanciful talk and polls and IFA chat behind the scenes archaeology isn?t going to change. In the last five years nothing significant has changed I even went to Ireland to sample archaeology over there but to no avail and wrote about my experiences with M Gowan and Co in the Digger some time ago "Irish Nightmare".
As long as you have a group of people with a passion for something you have another group willing to take advantage of that.
And you! You know who you are. your all the managers/directors of the Units out there from A to Z who hold the personal responsibility for the state of archaeology in this country.
It?s not the legislation the ppgs and government help or hindrance, we could work with that and attempt to make change. Its about the conditions, the awful conditions Units, and every one of them is guilty, make us work in, all the poor pay and exploitation that quite frankly would land you court in the real working world. Why do we not complain! To the Unit don?t make me laugh we?d never dig again, blacklisted! Its a very small world this archaeology business.
Promotion laughable! Too many ivory towers have been built and god forbid someone should come up the ladder and threaten the position of some manager lacking in confidence. That?s were the being ignored on site stems from. Its a fear, its a fear of being discovered as underneath all that pomposity their just the same just as scared and insecure as everybody else in this awful business. So you?re all to blame Diggers to Unit directors. We should all take a go look at ourselves and put up or shut up.
I think at the end of the day we are all like heroin addicts trying to chase that first hit but never reaching it no matter how hard we try? And that first hit is this:
Its that barmy summer dig we all did at Uni when the wine was flowing and the erb was smellin fine and we all attempted to set the world to rights.. We didn?t care if we were getting paid coz we were archaeologists man! doing it all not for the money but for the love of it.
We were a happy few with another party filled year of uni to look forward to. We were all camped away in our little haven where the concerns of the world could not touch us for the few weeks we had. Our only concern was the steady supply of booze and puff and if we could get off with someone. Its this collection of emotions we continue to chase after we enter the real world of contract archaeology and for a time we think its everything we wanted? but only for a time?
