Archaeology - can you fix it?

[Jack]

<Cough!> The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 (the primary legislation relating to Scheduled Monuments, which are by definition nationally important) makes damaging a Scheduled Monument a criminal offence punishable by a sentence of up to six months and a fine. It's just a shame so few convictions are brought..

Though I'd say the legislation needs beefing up, expanded to cover non-scheduled remains etc......and of course fines need to be handed out.

If there was such a law, and industry knew that it was one of those things on the list that they had to pay for, like mitigation of noise and water pollution, building and fire regulations, ecological mitigation, health and safety/cdm regulations etc etc it would be covered in the initial costings so they'd just pay it (usually!).

At the moment it usually comes down to the question 'do we have to pay for this?'
answer.....'well, maybe, depending on a, b or c.'
response...'ok, well lets try and get out of it then.'

[Dinosaur]

@ Dinosaur...But you're always saying that your BA was pointless and you didn't learn anything useful

Actually, I have to admit, not fully true - I learnt a healthy contempt for many academics, who use their excessively prolonged education and subsequent churning-out of pointless (and often just plain rubbish) 'research' to avoid joining the rest of us in what is hopefully the real world for as long as possible. There's some absolutely staggering b***ocks published under the heading of archaeology, much of it frequently factually wrong despite having supposedly been peer-reviewed...raises questions about the peers and indeed the whole setup....as a recent example I've had considerable interest in a piece of published university-based research of which the 'scientific' (as in lab-based/chemistry/physics) bit was fine, but unfortunately the conclusions were based on totally unsupportable dating from old excavations where even the publisher of the original sites made it repeatedly quite clear that most of the relevent dating was purely conjectural and unsupported by the excavated evidence (and I've been doing stuff from another angle which kicks even more props out of the original suggested chronology)...errr, why wasn't some of this pointed out pre-publication? These problems were entirely apparent from even a cursory read-through of the original (very well known) publication which was the entire basis of the recent research - had the 'academics' even read it?...

Has 'woman buried with cow' from a while back received academic publication by the way, does anyone know?

[kevin wooldridge]

Why, and who do you envisage carrying out any archaeological work? After all elsewhere in Europe all archaeology is still undertaken as commercial work,

Actually I cheated a little with my suggestions, because everything I suggested exists at present in the way that archaeology is set up in Norway.

Not 'everywhere' in Europe has commercial archaeology, I can think of a few other countries besides Norway, where commercial archaeology doesn't exist....as for the implementation of my proposals. Well of course in the UK its just crazy talk, but I do think that archaeology should have an alternative strategy to argue against those who chase destruction of heritage for profit. Promotion of an overseer organisation, regulated by statute and outside of the planning system (as in Norway) is an absolute fundamental to that end...

[Dinosaur]

Tricky to see who you'd put in charge in the UK, too many vested interests in the commercial sector/IFA, EH is being progressively emasculated when it comes to dirt archaeology (i.e. not too far down the line there won't be anyone left with getting-their-hands-dirty experience), the academic world have in general already become too distanced from the realities of what really goes on ....choice seems to be the CBA or BAJR and I'm not sure the latter would have the time....

[kevin wooldridge]

I'd be happy for the National Trust to be in charge providing it were independent of government and planners, but backed by legislation. somewhat akin to the proposals being put forward for the press complaints commission....(the legally backed one rather than the Sun in-house jobby)....

[P Prentice]

sure - the national trust have a grand record for dealing with their in-house archaeologists - they obviously take the buried record very seriously.
@ dinosaur, just curious about your contempt for academia, which is afterall the bedrock of any ology - were you slighted or cuckolded by any chance?

[Wax]

I take it PP has his tongue very firmly in his cheek. Much of the NT might be admirable but not sure it has got its head round archaeology.

[Sith]

I know that it won't happen but I would prefer a world where the National Trust carried on being the National Trust (with wiser heads runnig the archaeological show), and where English Heritage stopped trying to become the National Trust and took its statutory obligations more seriously.

[Navajo]

Where I live and work the helpful NT archaeologist gives all the commercial work to one company without going through any fair and open tendering processes. Happy days for some.

[CARTOON REALITY]

[INDENT]@ dinosaur, just curious about your contempt for academia, which is afterall the bedrock of any ology - were you slighted or cuckolded by any chance?[/INDENT]

I like to believe the true tale involves a beautiful princess, an epic sword battle hard won - and the quest finally thwarted by a unversity professor with halitosis.
Call me a romantic why don't you. . .