Comarch Wrote:Ok, lets get some things straight.
I absolutely agree that training needs are not being met in commercial archaeology. I was in the field for 20 years and did not have 1 single day being 'trained'. I also had to pick stuff up from day one on site. That puts me in the same boat as many people and also more than a 'so-called' archaeologist. In commercial archaeology the key is in the name - commercial. They (developers) will do things cheap, as it is in the nature of capitalism to do so, and units vie for business in the same manner. Do you think they will invest in a transitory work force with little union muscle? We are not professionals because we do not have a professional structure for field staff to be so called. That is a question for field archaeologists to fight to answer and all power to your elbow. I know it will be hard; I was a union official!
Cash for community archaeology has nothing to do with the field and how it is funded. Developers pay your wages through the units - basic. CA money would not go to field arch., even if CA projects did not exist. Money is not being sucked out of field archaeology by CA.
Principles, codes and standards apply to commercial archaeology because you are paid to do a job. People involved in CA projects, whether excavation or other, are not paid or working on commercial sites in the majority of cases. They work mainly on sites specially set up for CA projects or some people pay to work on specially designed training sites, run as a business. In 20 years I only worked on one site with volunteers as part of a specially designed project which had no impact on the other jobs undertaken by the unit. The need for codes, princilples and standards rests with the person(s) running CA sites/projects. That is why they need to have rigerous training of CAs by peers and archaeology organisations and thus avoid 'cowboys' taking over to make a quick buck from a growing trend. Codes relate to all who make a living by the subject.
So the past is private property?! Commercial archaeology is not the only criteria of the past. Just because we have worked for private businesses and paid by developers 'the past' has not been privatised. The activity of commercial archaeology should not be mixed up with the idea of the past. That belongs to all. Not units, not developers who own the land, not academics who teach and research it and not by those who find it. Do you take home what you find? Technically it is owned by someone, intellectually it is owned by us all.
People who wish to get involved in 'the past' in whatever way, are not trying to be Archaeologists (although they may want to go on and be so), just interested, like we all were at some point, before we became delicate little flowers wanting to keep archaeology all to ourselves and not have the 'great unwashed' poking their noses in. Any person working in CA is not looking to 'have authority' (show off) but is driven by a passion to enthuse anyone looking to touch the past for themselves rather than being put in the position of a voyeur.
Anyone who thinks that the trend for more public access to archaeology/heritage will fade and we can go back to our 'hobby' in peace is p***ing into the wind. If we want to be professional lets have a professional approach to making that access sustainable and positive for heritage workers and the public.
Reading your previous post as well I completely agree with it - I would rather there were full-time community archaeologists being able to look after community projects as I think it would be a lot healthier, sort of like Finds Liaison Officers connecting with local societies, schools, interested parties etc. However, this is only the case in some areas - lucky them. Elsewhere community projects seem to be a motley bag ranging from the very well run and well thought out, to the extremely poor, even fraudulent where money is syphoned into the pockets of a snake oil salesman with plenty of charm and a good story (God I wish I could name names and projects on this forum).
Getting back to your second post, to say that the entire capitalist system is based entirely on lowest prices is simply not true and smacks of a political agenda that I won't pursue. Archaeology may well be largely won and lost on price (although not exclusively) but that is because it is not something developers have any real interest in so they are not always worried about the quality. It is something that needs to be tackled because it is a circular argument - no one wants to invest in training (for example) because the workforce is seen as transitory but the workforce is seen as transitory in part because no one has bothered to invest in training (and therefore make that work force worth hanging on to). It needs an injection of secure capital to allow that to happen. Cash from HLF and similar projects does have an affect on the 'commercial' sector as much of the supervisory/specialist/report writing is done by professions working for commercial units (although these are often parts of charities - discuss), unless there is a dedicated Community Archaeologist, like yourself. The funding is therefore being transformed into wages for commercial archaeologists who might otherwise be carrying out a watching brief in advance of a new hotel being built. It might therefore seem a strange irony that they find themselves teaching volunteers how to dig or whatever in the knowledge that they have had no official training in their professional careers. I didn't say that money is being sucked out of commercial archaeology by CA, on the contrary, but it is a shame that none of it is apparently available to train the trainers.
The only principles, codes and standards I am aware of in archaeology are those of the IfA, which apply to anyone who is a member, not just commercial archaeologists. I only wish the dire projects I knew of getting 10s of thousands of pounds of HLF funding had any kind of standards watch dog overseeing them.
It was unit who mentioned about the past being private property and I wouldn't want to comment on his thinking... OK, I will. He has a point. Clearly 'the past' is a concept or perhaps a real thing depending how you look at it, but either way it belongs to no-one and everyone. However, the past as defined by archaeology is made up of physical things and they do technically belong to someone, as you said. Even if it is a museum it's not as if they let you take things home for the weekend! Either way this isn't really relevant, but people will still get over exited about the ownership of things from the past and it can become an issue. Treading on the toes of the local community regarding the ownership of artefacts could get quite awkward.
I don't think most people working in 'commercial archaeology' as you seem to define it are worried about the great unwashed poking their noses in, rather they want to be able to get on with their jobs in already trying circumstances. Who wouldn't? I would imagine that everyone working in archaeology is driven by similar passions, it's just sometimes they are not able to express it.