25th May 2009, 03:51 PM
Hi Bier Keller, Old Girl, Gonetopot and Oxbeast. Welcome and thanks for your comments. At the moment you?re thinking in terms of individual developers not being able to pay for their projects.
That's fair enough - planning guidance is administered on a case-by-case basis, but I'd like to broaden the discussion here to consider the wider business environment. I'm talking about the economic factors that influence the procurement of archaeological services, and the implications for a restructuring of the economic model underpinning the polluter-pays principle.
I started this thread to hear from any strong advocates for either socialist or capitalist models of development-led archaeology, following the arguments made in the Radio Four programme about breaking the link between archaeologists and developers. To get the ball rolling I'll present one of the arguments against a fully privatised sector.
If we take the plummeting demand for archaeology as a yard stick, the polluter already can't afford to pay. Of course, houses, roads, hospitals, and schools must all still be built, and the cultural heritage environment still assessed in advance, but in the current economic climate developers can only maintain profitably by reducing their cost base considerably. In this extreme situation where there is little to no work available, competition between archaeological suppliers favours the stupid ? those willing to take short-term financial risks or those failing to cost jobs appropriately. As all organisations (stupid and intelligent) are forced to adapt to these new realities, we've seen massive lay offs throughout the sector, a reduction in pay, working time and benefits. The pain (borne mostly by staff) is manageable in the short-term whilst we all look desperately for signs of 'green shoots' in the economy. But if, as commentators are speculating, this is 'the new normal' rather than just another turn in the economic cycle, we need a radical rethink.
There may well have been great gains made in the name of commercial archaeology over the last 19 years that make this the least worst option for development-led archaeology, but the fact remains that the sector is particularly vulnerable to extreme market swings, and this is a direct consequence of the capitalist model.
Peter Hinton writes in the forward the 2009 IFA year book: "It doesn't help that the present market structure fails to discriminate effectively between accredited providers of high quality archaeological services and the rest, and so provides a disservice to the public, to the clients who commission archaeology and of course the archaeologists themselves." It might be argued that the monitoring framework of development control archaeologists and archaeological consultants provides a buffer to ensure standards are maintained irrespective of financial pressure (and if this is what you believe, let?s hear from you). But contractors are still ultimately responsible to their clients and not the wider society in whose interests they work.
Even the very terms of this debate are open to question. Who's the polluter here? The developer? The new building itself? Or the people of the past, whose material trace requires cleaning and processing by specialist environmental risk managers?
http://www.diggingthedirt.com
Quote:quote:Originally posted by oldgirl
A 'polluter pays' principal means that developers have to pay for archaeology damaged/disturbed by their development. I think that if it's too expensive, don't develop that site.
There aren't that many complete and utter suprises if the initial work has been done properly......
That's fair enough - planning guidance is administered on a case-by-case basis, but I'd like to broaden the discussion here to consider the wider business environment. I'm talking about the economic factors that influence the procurement of archaeological services, and the implications for a restructuring of the economic model underpinning the polluter-pays principle.
I started this thread to hear from any strong advocates for either socialist or capitalist models of development-led archaeology, following the arguments made in the Radio Four programme about breaking the link between archaeologists and developers. To get the ball rolling I'll present one of the arguments against a fully privatised sector.
If we take the plummeting demand for archaeology as a yard stick, the polluter already can't afford to pay. Of course, houses, roads, hospitals, and schools must all still be built, and the cultural heritage environment still assessed in advance, but in the current economic climate developers can only maintain profitably by reducing their cost base considerably. In this extreme situation where there is little to no work available, competition between archaeological suppliers favours the stupid ? those willing to take short-term financial risks or those failing to cost jobs appropriately. As all organisations (stupid and intelligent) are forced to adapt to these new realities, we've seen massive lay offs throughout the sector, a reduction in pay, working time and benefits. The pain (borne mostly by staff) is manageable in the short-term whilst we all look desperately for signs of 'green shoots' in the economy. But if, as commentators are speculating, this is 'the new normal' rather than just another turn in the economic cycle, we need a radical rethink.
There may well have been great gains made in the name of commercial archaeology over the last 19 years that make this the least worst option for development-led archaeology, but the fact remains that the sector is particularly vulnerable to extreme market swings, and this is a direct consequence of the capitalist model.
Peter Hinton writes in the forward the 2009 IFA year book: "It doesn't help that the present market structure fails to discriminate effectively between accredited providers of high quality archaeological services and the rest, and so provides a disservice to the public, to the clients who commission archaeology and of course the archaeologists themselves." It might be argued that the monitoring framework of development control archaeologists and archaeological consultants provides a buffer to ensure standards are maintained irrespective of financial pressure (and if this is what you believe, let?s hear from you). But contractors are still ultimately responsible to their clients and not the wider society in whose interests they work.
Even the very terms of this debate are open to question. Who's the polluter here? The developer? The new building itself? Or the people of the past, whose material trace requires cleaning and processing by specialist environmental risk managers?
http://www.diggingthedirt.com