is heritage good for local people?

[Unitof1]

this is heritage management rather than archaeology. I am with the undetectable man and then some in being suspicious of mixing government and archaeology and praising it. I tend to think of heritage management as something to do with museums, Tom what is the connection of heritage management to the bushman trial?

“Traditional farm buildings are defined as those built in the local vernacular tradition before 1940” means little to me and is presumably a new tradition or was this defined in 1985/1990 (can traditions be defined after 1940) and might we have to wait a while to find out if this new tradition lasts, particularly at the local level as it could be something to do with the national level which stopped development of local vernacular traditions in 1940. Why was/are/will there be a shortage of traditions in these areas?

I wish that Defra would just go up to landowners (and not call them farmers) and give them money rather than have to come up with such convoluted reasons with words such as traditional, vernacular, heritage. Is this an example of mixing government, natives and heritage management or is it archaeology http://www.defra.gov.uk/rds/em/news/28-09-05.htm

[m300572]

Unit, does 'heritage not include archaeology? IN the sense that 'heritage' is 'that which can be inherited', and defining archaeology as not only the study of the material remains of humanities past activities but also these material remains themselves?

To enable the survival of any of these inheritable remains is it not better to try and manage them for their long term conservation rather than allow what is left to disappear in a short time.

Why should Defra give 'landowners' rather than farmers money - the agri-environment agreements are normally between the farmer and the government, rather than the landowner and the government (although the landowner and farmer can be the same but there are a lot of tenanted farms). Are we paying farmers to subsidise the profits of supermarkets (which is what support payments do) or for environmental benefits which are of wider benefit to the population as a whole - this last is what agri-environment schemes are for.

Farm buildings - most pre-1940 farm buildings were built in the vernacular tradition. If you don't actually know what this means then I would recommend the writings of R.W. Brunskill, particularly relevant being Traditional Farm Buildings of Britain (3rd ed, 1999). The vernacular tradition is the local style of building using local materials and designs for buildings (so farm buildings vary in style and materials depending on where they stand in the country).

I am an archaeologist by training, but my current role is, as you say, heritage management - that heritage involves archaeology as well as ecology and landscape issues.

[Unitof1]

Your present role is giving money to people who have ploughed out most of our archaeology in our life time. I assure you that it has nothing to do with heritage management

I think building I think deeds I think owner.

The source of your funding is CAP (the corn law -farmers have been subsidised for an awful long time in fact these traditional vernacular buildings were probably build on them-I think I am on to something here), you have decided to get this funding to “farmers” by helping them maintain some buildings –apparently ones not fit to be listed or scheduled and you like to drop the word archaeology and as you do it telling me that I will inherit something presumably on the grounds of some preservation in situ argument.

what gets me is when I meet farmers I have to tell them that I am absolutely nothing to do with these pension scams but do they believe me-No.

[m300572]

Your present role is giving money to people who have ploughed out most of our archaeology in our life time. I assure you that it has nothing to do with heritage management

So what do we do, let what remains be ploughed away, or do we aim to preserve what remains? And try to prevent intensification of farming destroy areas that have no been ploughed with modern equipment for many years.

If you think - building-deeds- owner I assume that you would like all buildings to be maintained by the owner at the owners expense. Ideal world this would happen but presumably you would also be happy for buildings which have become redundant to be demolished and replaced with the soulless brick boxes that have homogenized the appearance of Britain's towns and villages today.

Source of funding - So what? I haven't decided anything, the politicians have decided, on tha basis of of reports of the environment being damaged in the name of production in the ealry 1980's, and the discovery that the rural economy is based more on services (mainly the tourist industry) than it is on farming to support measures that will maintain the rural economy. Why "farmers" in quotation marks - how many farmers do you actually know? Most of the ones I have ever met (and I have known farmers since I was a boy so I have met a fair few( want to produce good products in the best possible way without destroying the farm in the process, and leaving it in good condition to hand on to their successors (that would be heritage in its original sense). The alternative is perhaps to leave it to a totally free market and then see how much archaeology actually survives anywhere. If you tell me that developers will fund archaeological work without some form of compulsion or will preserve in situ if it reduces their profit margins then you are, I would suggest, living in a fantasy land. Similarly farmers have been intensifying their production because of free market forces - therefore if there is to be any archaeolgy surviving in the rural landscape there needs to be incentives for them not to destroy it. In the balance between the need to make a living and the desire to have a pleasant environment, the making a living will win out most of the time.

Vernacular buildings built on Corn Law profits - perhaps in some cases - most of the ones I deal with were probably built on the profits made by selling produce to the government during the wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France and then by supplying the industrial towns with fresh dairy products.
What do you suggest as an alternative? - most of the alternatives I can think of wouldn't leave much in the way of employment for any archaeologists as there would be no archaeology of any sort left to inherit.

I have no idea what you are talking about when you say 'pension scams' - who is scamming who and what is it do do with pensions?

[Unitof1]

“It was put to me recently that history/archaeology/heritage was much better at preserving things than people, for example world heritage site status is sometimes a mixed blessing for those living nearby.”

I would possibly have answered that I would prefer to separate archaeology from history/heritage/heritage management and suggest that archaeology was not intended to preserve things or people. Where archaeology had been cited I would suggest intellectual fraud.

(I see certain civil servants as “pension scams” and see farmer as a redundant term that has had its day probably most aptly suited to late 19th century to mid twentieth century small holders.)

[m300572]

As archaeology is the study of the material remains of humanities past activities then, by logical definition preserving archaeological remains is preserving things rather than people. It therefore follows on that anyone utilising these preserved things for benefit to the current population is actually engaged in 'heritage management' rather than archaeology, although 'heritage management' can involve archaeological works such as recording in advance of conservation or survey of a site in order to aid its interpretation. It is a convenient shorthand that most people confuse the two - it also makes it easier for the non-professional to grasp what we are about - if I tell a farmer that I am an arhaeologist he will tend to have a fairly good idea of what I am interested in, if I say I am the Historic Environment Advisor engaged in Heritage Management I am likely to get a blank look.

Citing archaeology for heritage management continues this convenient shorthand - if we all had the benefit of an education which encompassed the study of archaeology and the study of heritage management then it would be relatively simple to seperate these out - sadly ther are more people in the world who don't have the benefits of this that there are who do so we tend to go withthe convenient shorthand. You may cite it as intellectual fraud, I'd possibly cite the other extreme as pedantry. I do have arather better understanding of from where you are coming now though.

If 'farmer' is a redundant term best suited to late 19th-mid 20th C smallholdings how would you you define modern farmers? Many of them are still operating on relatively small farms and the huge arable farmers who run everything by contractor are still in control of what they grow and what inputs go into the land so are still farmers, even if on an industrial scale.

Pension scams - good job I'm not a civil servant then! I might think you were referring to me. Although I have been a civil servant as well as a digger, surveyor, supervisor, site director, project manager and planning archaeologist in my time.

[Unitof1]

“if I tell a farmer that I am an arhaeologist he will tend to have a fairly good idea of what I am interested in, if I say I am the Historic Environment Advisor engaged in Heritage Management I am likely to get a blank look”.

Or you are worried the grant grabbing never heard of deminimus might call you a pedant

[m300572]

:-))

On the grant side of things, is it the farmers fault that there are grants? The whole rural economy has been skewed massively since WWII first by the government trying to ensure that the country could be self sufficient in foodstuffs, then by Common Market policies partly driven by the massive inequalities between urban and rural France in the 1950s and 60's, then by production subsidies running out of control and now by the latest rounds of SPS and big supermarkets having a stranglehold on production. The farmers cannot be blamed for the grants being there - its not as if the farming community has a massive influence on the government in terms of their voting power, unlike in France.

What would you propose as a solution and how would you manage the fallout from any solution that was implemented?

[Unitof1]

Follow New Zealand’s 1984 lead with confidence.

[kevin wooldridge]

quote:Originally posted by Unitof1

Follow New Zealand’s 1984 lead with confidence.

Whilst the liberalisation of the NZ economy in 1984 is often quoted as a textbook example of monetarist application (largely by monetarists) some observers disagree, for example The Failure of the New Zealand Economic Revolution of 1984-91 by Tim Hazledine The University of Auckland.