Licences?

[Fishslice]

Tile Man and Invisible Man
(are you brothers?)

Thanks for that - would hate to see amateur archaeology lose out. The campaign did elecit a response from the (Socialist??) government who don't seem to consider licencing necessary. Has anything changed in the last 5 years?

I do like the EH statement "there is scope to use Article 3 to improve the standards of work carried out under Scheduled Monument Consent on scheduled sites, or as a result of the operation of PPG16 in work related to development control". Without licencing I don't see how the convention can be applied in this way.

[Curator Kid]

I agree with Fishslice - Article 3 of Valletta specifically states that "...excavations and other potentially destructive techniques are carried out only by qualified, specially authorised persons", and that each party shall "...apply procedures for the authorisation and supervision of excavation and other archaeological activities...". Licensing would appear to be the only way this clause could be implemented.

The CIA really muddied the waters on this. The Article doesn't say anything about stopping amateur or independant archaeology - it just says that people should be qualified and authorised to carry out the work. Plenty of amateurs could easily fulfill those requirements and would have no trouble carrying on exactly as they are in such circumstances. It's only designed to stop bad archaeologists doing bad archaeology - surely we're all in favour of that, whether they be amateur or professional.

[Tile man]

I profoundly disagree with the CIA, but thought it worth reminding people on how the debate has developed. The problem with licenses as they would still need a properly resourced and supported national and locally based regulatory body. So rather than a revolutionry change to the system ( with all the side issues of teething probklems and unforseen consequences) it strikes me as more pragmatic, and acheivable to lobby for the proper legal and financial support for the system as it is working now.

[Tile man]

In terms of ' what the IFA is doing', there is this paper from Pete Hinton



http://www.archaeologists.net/modules/ic...on2004.doc

which I have shamelessly lifted from here

English Heritage, working on behalf of DCMS with Historic Scotland, Cadw and the Northern Ireland Environment and Heritage Service, has been fine-tuning the voluntary ?statement of principles? (based on the IFA Code of conduct) to move the UK towards compliance with Article 3 of the Valletta Convention. Non-IFA members signing up to the statement of principles will not be bound by them and there is no obvious mechanism for enforcement. For this reason there is a good argument for requiring something stronger for commercial work (while ensuring that addressing the problems of the profession places no additional obstacles in the way of voluntary sector fieldwork, which should be encouraged), and so English Heritage is taking forward internally proposals for requiring appropriate accreditation (based on the principles of registration or IFA membership) for projects that it commissions or for which it advises on scheduled monument consent. We hope that guidance to planning authorities will extend this practice into the majority of commercial work. Only if there are clear commercial disadvantages in not being registered can RAOs cope with the kinds of cost increases that the profession needs, and the IFA must require.

[Tile man]

And the CBA response can be found here
http://www.britarch.ac.uk/valletta/index.html

[Curator Kid]

Hi Tile Man. I hear what you're saying, and the debate itself is interesting, but as far as I understand it the Convention is binding on the Government, and since they've signed it, they should implement it - whatever stink the CIA causes. In that sense the debate is irrelevant. The Convention says that procedures for the authorisation and supervision of archaeological activities shall be applied, and that's what Government has to do. Anything less is inadequate, is a cop-out on their part, and defeats the whole purpose of signing the thing in the first place.

[Tile man]

I think that part of the problem is that the government already has procedures for the autherisation and supervison of archaeological practice. And IO'm afraid that my experience working in countries ( not Ireland) with licence requirments has not been that positive, and can even require the use of methodologies which I would not recognise as either best practice (or even adequate practice).

[Curator Kid]

quote:Originally posted by Tile man

I think that part of the problem is that the government already has procedures for the autherisation and supervison of archaeological practice. And IO'm afraid that my experience working in countries ( not Ireland) with licence requirments has not been that positive, and can even require the use of methodologies which I would not recognise as either best practice (or even adequate practice).

The Government claims they have the procedures in place, but they don't and they know it. The procedures (such as they are) only apply to planning-related archaeology and Scheduled sites. No-one is properly monitoring the quality of work done by (for example) amateur archaeologists, university archaeologists or television programme archaeologists. Rubbish from the CIA shouldn't be allowed to cloud the issue. It's about standards not exclusion.

[beamo]

I recall a few years ago that George Lambrick carried out a couple of reviews of aspects of Irish archaeology - one was on urban evaluations, think the other one was about monitoring but can't remember the title. These used to be available on the Duchas website but are not there any more.

One point that came out was that he could find very few of the 12 month detailed reports that were supposed to have been submitted. At first Duchas (who issued the licences) claimed that the reports had been misplaced and were probably being used by someone else. Then it turned out that Duchas did not feel that they could actually enforce that part of the license agreement, as they were not funding the reporting themeselves. I supose the point here is that any licensing system is only as good as the regulators. Unless adequate funding is provided the system will always be open to abuse and inconsistency.

As someone who has occasionally forayed into Irish archaeology as a consultant, but who is not a license holder (or has ever applied for one) I have found the whole set-up to be potentially problematic. I suspect this is why the Irish equivalent of the Highways Authority (and the Gas Board) has had to find ways around the system rather than trying to comply with it.

As already stated, licenses are issued to individuals. Despite much lobbying (particularly from UK units eyeing up major fieldwork jobs on the roads) it is not possible to have a license issued to a corporate body. Whilst some may see this as a benefit in terms of setting up a personal level of responsibility, there are significant consequences.

The license requires the licensee to ensure that the work is carried out properly and is adequately reported, to full publication if necessary. As in the UK however, the contract for the work is usually between the contractor (who employs the licensee) and the developer. Through the issue of the license, the licensee undertakes to see the whole project through to completion - but has no personal contractual agreement for funding. If the developer can't / won't pay for reporting, the licensee may well (through no fault of their own) be unable to fulfil the terms of the license. They would also have no redress against the developer and the developer's contract was with the contractor (corporately) and not the licensee.

What happens if a licensee wants to move to take up a post with another contractor ? Do they get to take all the jobs for which they hold a license with them (but of course they only ever hold one license at a time !) or does the license have to be transferred to another license-holder at their present employer ? What if the present employer doesn't have any other license-holders, or if all license-holders have no capacity for additional licenses.

These are only a few of the issues that I have come across in an admittedly small amount of consulting work in Ireland. I'm sure that there would be many more that could arise. Licensing might be one way of meeting Valetta, but there could be better ways.


Beamo

[BAJR Host]

But at least by highlighting the problems... we could work around them and come up with solutions?

Another day another WSI?