23rd October 2009, 12:23 PM
To be honest, I've never had a particularly clear idea of what the BAJR Fed was supposed to achieve. I remember David saying just before its inception that it would be up to individual members to mould the course of its development and it seems to me that most people are happy to have a forum-based set-up and, more or less, leave it at that.
It has been commented that the BAJR Site Hut has been rather quiet of late (an impression that I share), and it's been suggested that this is down to people feeling insecure in their jobs (where they still have them) and not wishing to rock the boat. Perhaps those of us who have lost our jobs are so dispirited with archaeology in general (hopefully a temporary state of affairs) that we no longer feel like participating. I don't know.
And yet... In its (in my, perhaps unfair, opinion) rather muted, unimaginative and iandequate reponse to the effects of the economy upon field archaeologists, the IfA has suggested that newly redundant archaeologists need to find ways of supporting each other encouragingly and constructively through these difficult times. BAJR Fed seems a perfect arena to this on a local, regional and national level. So why hasn't that happened?
I know that I have part of the answer when I acknowledge that I've thrown this stone from atop my enormous glass house and, of course, the potential of the BAJR Fed is far wider than helping unemployed archaeologists. But, if we can't use it effectively in the middle of a crisis that still threatens to engulf all of us, then what the hell is it there for?
I'll crawl back into my bunker now.
It has been commented that the BAJR Site Hut has been rather quiet of late (an impression that I share), and it's been suggested that this is down to people feeling insecure in their jobs (where they still have them) and not wishing to rock the boat. Perhaps those of us who have lost our jobs are so dispirited with archaeology in general (hopefully a temporary state of affairs) that we no longer feel like participating. I don't know.
And yet... In its (in my, perhaps unfair, opinion) rather muted, unimaginative and iandequate reponse to the effects of the economy upon field archaeologists, the IfA has suggested that newly redundant archaeologists need to find ways of supporting each other encouragingly and constructively through these difficult times. BAJR Fed seems a perfect arena to this on a local, regional and national level. So why hasn't that happened?
I know that I have part of the answer when I acknowledge that I've thrown this stone from atop my enormous glass house and, of course, the potential of the BAJR Fed is far wider than helping unemployed archaeologists. But, if we can't use it effectively in the middle of a crisis that still threatens to engulf all of us, then what the hell is it there for?
I'll crawl back into my bunker now.