10th September 2009, 12:23 PM
Headland Archaeology? Who the hell are those handsome devils?
This dovetails nicely with the ?archaeology and the global crisis? thread. On there the question was whether or not the commercial wing of the profession has gone too far in distancing itself from its natural constituency of public support. The general feeling was that that would be a bad thing as archaeology is undertaken in the public interest. On here the question is whether or not commercial organisations should embed themselves further into the business economy. I suspect that the general feeling here will be that that would be a good thing, as it would finally put archaeology on a parity with other similar professions.
But isn?t this all part of the identity crisis outlined in the article? Can we have our cake and eat it? Can we keep changing hats depending on who we?re speaking to at the time? What gets lost if we jettison the public? Is this an either/or proposition? Questions, questions, questions...
This dovetails nicely with the ?archaeology and the global crisis? thread. On there the question was whether or not the commercial wing of the profession has gone too far in distancing itself from its natural constituency of public support. The general feeling was that that would be a bad thing as archaeology is undertaken in the public interest. On here the question is whether or not commercial organisations should embed themselves further into the business economy. I suspect that the general feeling here will be that that would be a good thing, as it would finally put archaeology on a parity with other similar professions.
But isn?t this all part of the identity crisis outlined in the article? Can we have our cake and eat it? Can we keep changing hats depending on who we?re speaking to at the time? What gets lost if we jettison the public? Is this an either/or proposition? Questions, questions, questions...