28th June 2009, 12:28 AM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by mercenary
Now though the Hungate project appears (from the outside) to be more training dig than commercial project, despite promises to the contrary before it began. I suspect that Hungate has been used to kill a few birds with a single stone, by pretending a training dig is the "Public Archaeology" that was a requirement for the tender, and fulfilling whatever education requirements there are to maintain charitable status.
The public access programme at Hungate is actually quite extensive and must surely go quite a way beyond the basic requirements for the tender. Extra resources eg. staff, funding, etc, (in addition to what is required to carry out the commercial contract) have enabled the Trust to offer an enhanced public access programme.
The training dig is one aspect of the public access but there are many more. No paid staff on the commercial project have been replaced by trainees and/or volunteers. Trainees and volunteers work slower than the commercial team and require additional and often very intensive supervision, so a full commercial team is still required to get the job done on time and to budget.
The Hungate Outreach programme offers a very successful and wide range of public access archaeology via a community archaeology project, a Youth Offending project, guided public tours, free open days, educational workshops (on and off site) for schools, colleges, community centres, etc, talks/lectures to the heritage and non-heritage sectors, etc, joint projects with academic partners, regional business partners, etc.
There has been plenty of publicity about public stuff going on at Hungate, particularly in the local and regional press, as well as national media (TV and press).....