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8th February 2007, 11:48 AM
One of the fault lines in archaeology seems to run between professional and amateurs. We seem to inhabit dfferent worlds, with professionals ssen as younger and left of centre (politically speaking) and amateurs being older and to the right - the Current Archaeology letters page shows this quite well.
What then is the personal relationship between professionals and local societies. Are many people members of their local society? Here's your choices:
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8th February 2007, 01:47 PM
The fault line may lie between people who do it for a full time job and people who do it for a hobby - at the end of a day at work idon't necessarily want to go and do more archaeology and I have a family who would like to see me at weekends (although I do have an overlap between professional and hobby lives in the form of re-enactment as a way of interpreting the past).
How many professions are there where people actually practice their "9-5" job in their spare time?
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8th February 2007, 02:08 PM
I'm a member of my home county's society which is one the older and better one's in Britain, although as I no longer live there, the only reason I stil belong to it is for the annual journal, which occasionally contains sites I've worked on as a yoof:face-thinks:
The only other one I've had anything to do with was a district based one in the same county, which was set up by former volunteers at my then workplace, as we were finding more diffiult to accomodate them on site's due to insurance reasons.
It worked quite well for a few years as we ran various research projects for them, but, as with a lot of things, the committee running it changed, we had less time to run their projects and there was a bit of friction with various members who seemed to find it difficult to understand that our priority was not to find projects for them to run, despite it being patiently explained to them over and over again.
I occasonally wonder exactly what the future of a lot of these societies is going to be. It does seem that the majority of their members tend to be middle class and retired with a strong resistance to change, and in a lot of cases, not terribly appealing to younger members.
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8th February 2007, 02:15 PM
Is there not also an issue with some of the societies wanting to nibble away at the 'PPG16 pot', rather than concentrating on more traditional research projects that units don't have time or resources to do? This does seem to be a trend with watching briefs, for instance.
I recognise that this is a tiny problem, but it can still cause friction.
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8th February 2007, 03:35 PM
I'm with m300572 on this one. Working at archaeology full time (and then some!) tends to make doing archaeology in the rest of my time somewhat less appealing. Having said that I have worked closely with a local community group doing paid work and also doing quite a bit of unpaid work too. I have to be very careful in the type of unpaid work I do in that I risk the ire of my employer who considers it a form of 'moonlighting'.
The community group has spent a huge sum on professional help over the past few years and has run out of money. I suspect that they feel I should continue my work with them unpaid. I partly feel that I should, but as a professional I know that unpaid work de-values the hard won position of professionals.
After a lot of thought I have come to the conclusion that the two 'camps' are fundamentally incompatible.
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8th February 2007, 04:34 PM
Mercenary by name! [:p]
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8th February 2007, 08:05 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by Gog
Is there not also an issue with some of the societies wanting to nibble away at the 'PPG16 pot', rather than concentrating on more traditional research projects that units don't have time or resources to do? This does seem to be a trend with watching briefs, for instance.
I recognise that this is a tiny problem, but it can still cause friction.
Never heard of any specific cases of that, but I do rememeber it was one of APAAG recommendations that volunteers be encouraged to do watching briefs, I think.
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8th February 2007, 08:13 PM
Forgive my ignorance, but remind me what APAAG is?
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8th February 2007, 08:18 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by Gog
Forgive my ignorance, but remind me what APAAG is?
Actually, its APPAG. Getting my acronyms mangled[:I]
All Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group. They produced a report in 2003 on the current state of British Archaeology and some suggestions as to what could be done about it.
Read all about it here:
http://www.appag.org.uk/
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8th February 2007, 08:22 PM
Oh yes - I have heard of that one. I Googled APAAG and got a load of crap. Phew, thought I was being dimmer than usual there.
