17th May 2010, 10:46 AM
amiable drudge Wrote:what Unit is trying to point out is a major piece of sleight of hand at the heart of archaeology; big commercial companies, making a profit, whilst presenting the appearance of being philanthropic societies caring for our heritage.
pretty much in the same way as Burger King could be said to be 'looking after' all those big sad-eyed moo-cows.
i think he has a valid point; are these organisations charitable trusts, or are they commercial organisations? if they're outreach organisations, all well and good, but i notice that YAT are advertising for business development managers, preumably to help them expand beyond their traditional boundaries. not the activity you'd expect from a bunch of woolly-jumpered educational types, surely?
let's put it like this, if i were running a big engineering company, say, i'd be overjoyed if i could register as a charity and get work-experience 'volunteers' to come in on a regular basis and do a bit of welding or whatever; in the interests of 'outreach', obviously, and any profit they made for me would be entirely incidental...
Except that I suspect that what would actually happen is that, rather than making a profit (additional or otherwise) off the back of these volunteer welders the whole profession would be devalued and so making a profit would be harder than ever, which it seems to me is what is happening in archaeology. Everything has become geared around undercutting, saving money, and agressive expansion by those that can manage it. Like you say, such behaviour is to be expected of purely commercial organisations, but educational charities whose remit used to state that they were exploring the archaeology of one particularly area? Surely some mistake.
Getting back to the topic a little - an archaeological educational charitry should surely be exactly the sort of entity that could be applying for HLF money itself purely for the reason of establishing professional training. of course, doing that while competatively tendering at the same time and potentially training staff from rival companies might be a bit difficult.