How the west was won (by commercial archaeology)

[tmsarch]

What I never understand is why developers just see archaeology as something to be gotten rid of, a pollutant that devalues the land. Surely the knowledge of the fact that the land once was (insert interesting piece of archaeology here) should INCREASE the value of the land?

In 99% of cases I can't ever see this happening. Developers aren't building houses to make homes for people, they're doing so to make a profit. If they have to undertake archaeological work the cost of this will reduce their profit margin. People aren't going to pay a premium for a house that happens to be built on a Romano-British salt-working site. Developers can't break the ceiling price of an area just because a house is located on a medieval farmstead.

In blunt terms if I'm looking to buy a house and company A has built on a site with no archaeology and company B has built on a site that needed archaeological work I'm not going to pay a premium to live in company B's house (even if there was some really interesting archaeology there). I'd rather save my money and put it towards some carpets.

That's not to say that there aren't opportunities to add value to the archaeological project and generate positive publicity for the developer, but in most cases this isn't going to change the book value of the houses they're selling.

[Callsign]

Then why does archaeology and history sell?

[Dinosaur]

Currently? Alice Roberts! :face-approve:

Still comes a very poor third to cookery and house-moves on TV though, despite the depressed housing market.....

[drpeterwardle]

I have to say I agree with TS archaeology does not generally increase the monetary value of a development. This is to be contrasted with historic buildings when their presence often does. Similarly archaeology, history and architectural history (and artefact collection) are popular amongst the general public but this is very different to the monetary value of an archaeological site or a development following an excavation.
I am all in favour of research coming out of work brought about by development and making the result available to the populace. The point is how far is field work meaningful research? A watching brief or evaluation that finds nothing is clearly not. Yes an excavation provides data for research but how far is it research in itself. (This is a very old debate).
PPG 16 archaeology has produced hundreds if not thousands of volumes of excavation reports of a very high quality (compared to what went before) and many areas of study have been revolutionised by the wealth of data produced. But to my mind the problem is that the sampling strategy for data collection is dictated by where land is required for development and this leads to a very skewed data set. The massive area studies generated by projects such as Heathrow, The Eton Rowing Lake, Thanet Earth and similar counter this but how far are the results typical of the country as whole?
Every PPG 16 excavation is geared to a set of research goals as far they can be in a single project - this is a basic requirement in every part of the country.
Far from being like the wild west with cow boys PPG 16 brought in a massive injection of funding to archaeology say 100 million a year and with it a massive increase in knowledge. I not saying the current system is perfect it isn't from many points of view it is just so much better than the state system that existed before.
Peter

[Madweasels]

Peter talks of a 'massive injection of funding to archaeology, say ?100 million a year' but what does this really mean? 'Archaeology' is getting ?100 million? You reckon? I come from a publicly-funded museum background and I don't think we ever saw any of that ?100 million. In fact, because the units wanted to offload their gear onto us as quickly as possible, there was a public subsidy going towards them to help store the stuff in perpetuity. No. Rather I would rephrase Peter's line to say that there has been a massive injection of funding to the consultants and units whose business it is to do archaeology on development sites. Yes, they are part of our discipline, they are benefiting but it does not follow that all our discipline benefits from this massive injection. That we are learning more - yes, that cannot be disputed, but the reality of the everyday management of heritage resources etc. requires a rather better spread of the this injection than exists these days.

But its not going to happen, is it [waits for dino to tell me to stop being so idealistic :-)]

[Dinosaur]

PPG 16 archaeology has produced hundreds if not thousands of volumes of excavation reports of a very high quality (compared to what went before) and many areas of study have been revolutionised by the wealth of data produced. But to my mind the problem is that the sampling strategy for data collection is dictated by where land is required for development and this leads to a very skewed data set....Far from being like the wild west with cow boys PPG 16 brought in a massive injection of funding to archaeology say 100 million a year and with it a massive increase in knowledge. I not saying the current system is perfect it isn't from many points of view it is just so much better than the state system that existed before.

I'm currently sorting out the publication for a job I did a few years back where a block of flats was being stuck on top of a (almost entirely invisible/below ground) castle - the whole job was done excruciatingly to the letter of PPG16, the County and EH were all over it, preservation in situ etc. to the extent that the building was re-designed and then we hand-crafted the bits of foundation/service trenchs etc that couldn't avoid archaeology - the result?....yes, there's a castle there and there's some multi-phase stuff underneath, but the end result was a horribly 'bitty' mess where I really can't say much more than that, we saw lots of features we couldn't dig, there are some postholes but anyone's guess what they're part of or what date, there's not enough stratigraphic info to make sense of what is probably a really important pottery assemblage etc etc. The only 'good' thing is that it's all there (apart from all the holes I made in it of course!) in case anyone is still interested in 100 years time when they pull the flats down again....

.......is that really the best way to go looking at a site of national importance?

[Unitof1]

MW. The museums dont do anything with all of the commercial archives deposited with them. It seems to me that in the current set up it is some obscure development control requirement that the archives are deposited with them. Possibly a throw back to when archaeologists were also museum curators/DoE or ordnance survey archaeologists and who used to put their pet archives in the museum.

All the museums do is put up some pretence about what type box the grotty bits of post mod everything should be in and how the pot should be marked but that?s about it. I would like to see them justifying and pointing out in what way what ever is archived is vital important research material for some future research geniuses-some spotty undergrad dissertation once every fifty years?

Personally think that we should stop archiving anything commercial and that the museums should ?request? from us anything that they think they might want from reading the reports submitted. To get you attention you might like to pay us something for it. At the moment you have development control creating archives which nobody wants but they have absolutely no financial comeback for justifying the preservation.

Being a commercial archaeologist I don?t care what gets archived because it becomes a charge to the client. The only time I care is when I read things like Dinos ?site of national importance?. I think only nationally important if it?s a one day watching brief worth about ?375 which got turned into a five week cash cow extravaganza rather than a five week cash cow that got turned into a one day watching brief.

[SIZE=3]anyone's guess what they're part of or what date, there's not enough stratigraphic info to make sense of what is probably a really important pottery assemblage

[/SIZE]

not much point putting it in the museum then