9th April 2008, 05:40 PM
One aspect of developer reports i've noticed that tends to be poorly written is the ackowledgement section; over the years i've seen it is often down to the individual author as to whether the site crew is even mentioned having been on that particular project! and even when mentioned there is no attempt to say who did what or made discovery of occupation that the PO on site missed-for example on a BA/IA site i was on mid 90s i pushed the date range back to the neo,report says,yeah i was on that site and credit goes to PO,similarly an eval 5/6 years ago PO told me to record an empty trench-i find several phases of meso hut circles but the report is written to imply the PO discovered them.
I find it outrageous that in the 21st century field archaeologists are not allowed to be credited with their contributions to archaeology simply because they are not of managerial rank! its almost Duckensian in attitude.
My other major gripes is on site drawings which go into reports,i take great pride in doing a first class job in planning (the more complex the better) and have noticed that a "just a few lines here and there will do" attitude is to prevalent,and that the plan can be tarted up in post ex and have often been moaned at for doing too good a job!but what really annoys me is when my plans are digitised in post ex the person who does that then gets to put their name on my work-so much for being the original artist!
Whenever i raise the issue on all the above i am usually told only developers read the reports and they don't care so why should we bother,well pardon me for saying this but that is a lie-on average 6 copies of reports are made:2 for developers,2 for the unit,1 for the curator and 1 for the SMR which then means anyone could have access to them.
Is it so difficult to acknowledge everyone's contribution to archaeology other than just the "important one's"?
I find it outrageous that in the 21st century field archaeologists are not allowed to be credited with their contributions to archaeology simply because they are not of managerial rank! its almost Duckensian in attitude.
My other major gripes is on site drawings which go into reports,i take great pride in doing a first class job in planning (the more complex the better) and have noticed that a "just a few lines here and there will do" attitude is to prevalent,and that the plan can be tarted up in post ex and have often been moaned at for doing too good a job!but what really annoys me is when my plans are digitised in post ex the person who does that then gets to put their name on my work-so much for being the original artist!
Whenever i raise the issue on all the above i am usually told only developers read the reports and they don't care so why should we bother,well pardon me for saying this but that is a lie-on average 6 copies of reports are made:2 for developers,2 for the unit,1 for the curator and 1 for the SMR which then means anyone could have access to them.
Is it so difficult to acknowledge everyone's contribution to archaeology other than just the "important one's"?