5th January 2011, 07:19 PM
MSC was great for those of us who were already experienced diggers/supervisors and prepared to make the mental adjustment and stop living in tents for half the year and working in McDonalds the other half - finally you could be employed on site year-round and earn a decent(ish) steady wage (in comparison to 'subsistence' etc).
In actual fact quite a lot of 1980s MSC projects are gradually seeing the light of day (or did long-since), two big schemes I can think of off the top of my head (probably cos I spent a year on each) are the monographs on Raunds and Worcester Deansway (or whatever it was finally called, kept changing it's name even during the dig). Much of the archaeology was actually done to a bl***y good standard, although I'll happily concede some wasn't! The 'quality' parts of the Castleford mongraphs are actually mostly the work done under MSC, for instance. If the government want a good job creation scheme, writing the rest up would be a good start....
In actual fact quite a lot of 1980s MSC projects are gradually seeing the light of day (or did long-since), two big schemes I can think of off the top of my head (probably cos I spent a year on each) are the monographs on Raunds and Worcester Deansway (or whatever it was finally called, kept changing it's name even during the dig). Much of the archaeology was actually done to a bl***y good standard, although I'll happily concede some wasn't! The 'quality' parts of the Castleford mongraphs are actually mostly the work done under MSC, for instance. If the government want a good job creation scheme, writing the rest up would be a good start....