Empire of Dirt: time to call time on commercial archaeology in Northern Ireland?

[Stuart Rathbone]

The requirement for a License in both jurisdictions in Ireland demand a full strat report is submitted to the relevant department, a summary is placed in that years excavations bulletin, and that the site is published. The first two mostly happen fine, the last one not so much, which is what the article is about. Archives are deposited with the national museum in the republic and I guess the Belfast museum for NI.
Unit, you seem to think publishing this material is a waste of time? The idea that there is no demand for published archaeology is odd. Do you determine worth of information by it's market value? That way leads to Jedwood!

[Dinosaur]

How does Unit get all that background information for his projects? After all, an awful lot of archaeology was done before HERs were there to collate grey literature (indeed there wasn't much in the past) and many older paper archives/finds have long since disappeared so the published accounts stored away safely in libraries are often the only record - and there are plenty of copies rather than the two or three (or in many cases in my experience only one or a sad gap where one once was) copies of grey lit reports - and time will tell how durable digital archives are, we certainly can't access original digital files for some of our own reports from the '90s, the current in-house digital archive consists in many cases of scans of hard copies! And on-line publishing is only as durable as the site it's published on, am forever hitting links which have expired (or are for sale, judging by one last week). Paper publication is still the way to go

[Unitof1]

i have no idea what the demand is. people waste a lot of time writing novels but rely that there might be some demand and money to be made if it a best seller, but you cannot demand a best seller., thats what seems to be the system that bob feels is worty enough that they would want to have some different paradiam to pay diggers by. why not look at it as commercial archaeology has proved that it can produce a full strat report and a summery (but i bet could be inproved) and lets have some more please and at the same time go out and find out who said that archaeology is publication and you give it away for free because thats the apparent reality of the miserable world of a salary worker working for a pension in public services and beat them up good and propper and tell them to stop being so stupid.

I see that the irish have. tv liecence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_...of_Ireland
I am surprised seeing as its a blood early british colonial idea. Its realy penisious form of tax farming and as raymond discovered all about copyright, with a bit of supply and demand.

so dino isnt your work copyrighted?

[david.petts]

Just picked up on this debate. The blog post flags up some interesting issues. At the heart of it seems to be "what do we mean by publication". Robert Chapple seems to suggest that the gold standard should be fully peer reviewed publications in journals / monographs. I'm not sure I agree with this entirely.

First, there are some practical issues- there is no way that a journa such as UJA could cope with publishing all commercial archaeological interventions carried out in a given region. There is a real problem with capacity - local journals simply don't have the room to publish all the material - particularly as most local journals are not commercial concerns but run by volunteers from local societies. Even with publication subventions I think that most local journals would have serious problems in tackling all this material, not to mention that many journals might not want to be treated as semi-offical outlets for mass publication of minor site reports.

Second, is this issue of 'peer review'; most archaeological reports have two elements- the publication of the raw data (matrices; finds reports; basic phasing) on one hand and the wider interpretation / contextual material onthe other hand. For me, the most important element is the raw/minimally processed data - and it is this which is least amenable to 'peer review' unless the reviewer audits the original archives (which is really not the job of a peer reviewer)- many of us regularly use grey literature for research purposes, the fact that its not peer reviewed is not really a problem or an issue.

The key issue for me is not the full publication of all sites- but rather the prompt appearance of the 'grey lit' in an accessible format. However, this requires two things (1) that the curators have the willingness/ability/capacit to actually enforce quality standards during the excavation stage itself as well as in meeting the existing standards for grey lit (2) convenient access to the grey lit- with this in mind it is surprising that the NI archaeology scene appears not to be participating in OASIS. I may be wrong, but I can't find any evidence for a NI specific equivalent- if this is so, it is profoundly dismaying. It doesn't take a huge amount of investment in time/money to build a simple webpage with attached PDFs.

Overall I'd agree with Bob Chapple that NI has some specific issues with publication/accessing raw data- but I'm not sure I agree with his apocalyptic alternative. What's needed is some serious enforcement from the curators (and the support of their political masters) and a quick and easy fix to get the grey lit available on the web.

David

[beamo]

'The requirement for a License in both jurisdictions in Ireland demand a full strat report is submitted to the relevant department, a summary is placed in that years excavations bulletin, and that the site is published. The first two mostly happen fine, the last one not so much, which is what the article is about.'

Several years ago (2000 ish) George Lambrick and Ian Doyle reviewed this issue with regard to urban excavations/evaluations in the Republic of Ireland, on behalf of the Heritage Council. From memory, he found that Duchas (as was) felt unable to enforce that part of the licence which required submission of final publication report, therefore it was just ignored and further licences were issued to licence holders even though conditions attached to previous licences had not been met.

http://www.heritagecouncil.ie/fileadmin/...toring.pdf


Beamo

[Unitof1]

Agree with everything d.petts says except that anybody who hosts grey lit on the web should pay royalties to the authors

[pdurdin]

...anybody who hosts grey lit on the web should pay royalties to the authors

Either you're trolling or you don't have the slightest understanding of web hosting. I can't figure out which... :face-huh:

[Dinosaur]

Since people don't pay for the downloads, where would the money for the royalties come from, Unit?

[Unitof1]

I must admit purdin everytime I go down this copyright, vat taxman route it does feel like I am trolling on this forum. Why hosty does not just ban me for life rather than every few months i dont know. Its always this same cause. I watch the threads brew my blood begins to boil and I bloody well cant help myself. God I have tried to stop but its just that its as if I am in a parrallel universere and you lot are evil aliens trying to screw my universe up. This one I spotted from the off. An ni alien has come up with a world bleatting idea that commercial archaeology does not work but that something called publication apparently does, to be fair they did not seem to push the web publication bit that much but its every public service curators pension grabbing paradiam. Everything I write, I rewrite several times, I try to my dambest to be polite but it just slips out. I say simple things like what archaeologists do is create copyright, as soon as that gets out madness just persues....well dino wets knickers...

To answer your question alligations with questions and allegations are you saying that there are no things that are are hosted on the web that get royalties? I am just looking for some principles. Web sites seem to be charging for music and books, lots of things get sold, HERs charge. I am currently going through the very odd experience of other people putting my work up on oasis. Oasis was initionally sold to me as an electronic storage facility. They sent me things to sign over rights so that oasis not only could keep a copy of my work in their electronic valut but they also wanted to give it away on the web. I so did not sign the document and I did not up load any documents. The curators made me get an oasis number for the wsi and fill out some very stupid oasis form. Well I did I uploaded one-my first sole selfemployed one which I had done pre oaisis. They said no they could not up load it because it was pre oasis. I was happy with that although recently they have emaild saying that they have changed their minds. Now where do they get their pensions from and who is going around and photocopying my work and uploading it on the web without me getting a penny. (obviously you dont think that I should get anything, be jolly happy with the apparent freeness of it all, this warm felling that I have made the ex-existance of a ditch under some foundation available to people who think everything should be free although they dont say how this helps me when I feel poor.

I dont expect much out of dino as there has been no reply to two questions about whether dino is involved with the production of archaeological copyright. I only have asked because it would be interesting to know what if anything is written about it in dinos contract.

I do agree though with dino and I suspect of bob and that is

Paper publication is still the way to go

but the reasons are to do with vat exemption on books and maps

this is realy boring http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPorta...P110_10900

where it would be interesting to find out if archaeological "maps" ie my graphic sheets fell into standard rated commercial or "represent the natural or artificial features of countries, towns, seas, the heavens, etc are zero-rated"

[B]3.10 Maps, charts and topographical plans

[/B]

Supplies of all printed maps and charts designed to represent the natural or artificial features of countries, towns, seas, the heavens, etc are zero-rated. They can be printed on paper or other material (such as cloth) and in the form of single or folded sheets or a collection of such sheets bound together in book form (for example, an atlas).
But supplies of any of these are standard-rated:

• plans or drawings for industrial, architectural, engineering, commercial or similar purposes, in any format
  

[Dinosaur]

I dont expect much out of dino as there has been no reply to two questions about whether dino is involved with the production of archaeological copyright. I only have asked because it would be interesting to know what if anything is written about it in dinos contract.

It isn't contractually my copyright, no, but since I'm afraid I regard my work as contributing (or getting trashed by future work) towards a greater and public whole, once it's production has been been paid for that's the end of any financial involvement as far as I'm concerned anyway. All I expect is some acknowledgement - if someone wants to use it thats fine as long as they ask first. Why, you just doing it for the money?