6th April 2011, 09:41 PM
A pleasure, and it was nice to have a chat with Moreno!
I'd like to make a point to everyone who's arguing over the name.
Firstly, if you've got a better one then I'm sure the people currently involved in this would be interested to hear it. But that's not the key point for those of us working in and wanting to support commercial archaeology. The key point is that under the current political system and under the current circumstances, we're about as close to an irrelevance as you can be while still breathing. The cuts that are being made right now (those which at this very minute are leading to heritage and curatorial services being wound up and are being conducted in place of infrastructure development and are thus costing commercial units business and the rest of us jobs) and the various policy and beaurocratic systems which are being altered to back them up only pay heed to those parties who can demonstrate significant public support/demand and shout loudest about it. `
There are two questions we need to ask ourselves and each other:
Are we prepared to put ourselves out there, engage with and so generate public support?
How can we then shout about it and get the message out there?
The name doesn't make the slightest difference if we don't do those two things. And commercial archaeology doesn't really matter that much in the process of building up the profile of archaeology and heritage unless we get stuck in and make it matter. I think we all need to stop wandering around moaning about relevant but currently unsolvable issues (keep the pressure up, of course, but lets look at the bigger picture) and be prepared to put ourselves on the line and make what we do matter to the majority of people. I have concerns about some of the details to do with the 'MORTIMER' (or whatever anyone wants to call it) campaign, but the central tennet of it is that its up to you/us/anyone who's interested to form the agenda, do the legwork and perhaps we can reap a reward from it in our own professional aspirations and job security.
Its no good fussing and arguing over tiny irrelevances here when ultimately its down to us to get off our backsides and sort it out. And if you/I/we don't like the idea, nobody does this or anything else to the same effect and we end up with no part in the planning process, no curatorial archaeologists and very limited operational capacity for the commercial sector (i.e. most of us will be unemployed or doing something else), then its us who will have failed to take a hold of the opportunity.
The current difficulties and possible political onslaught to heritage might be unwarrented and undemocratic, but ultimately they can do what the like, regardless of whether we end up on the dole. What it does represent is an opportunity and a motivation for all of us to pick ourselves up, shake the last twenty years of festering crap off of our backs and start rebuilding this profession from the bottom up. We can give ourselves and our work some direct value to the people who ultimately end up paying for US in taxes and utility bills and yet can't quite see why they should have to fork out another few hundred quid or more to do some very interesting but, to them, not wholly necessary archaeology when they want to build the extension they've been saving up for the last twenty years to build (or somesuch other civil-sounding nonsense).
Love and peace,
GPS! xx(
I'd like to make a point to everyone who's arguing over the name.
Firstly, if you've got a better one then I'm sure the people currently involved in this would be interested to hear it. But that's not the key point for those of us working in and wanting to support commercial archaeology. The key point is that under the current political system and under the current circumstances, we're about as close to an irrelevance as you can be while still breathing. The cuts that are being made right now (those which at this very minute are leading to heritage and curatorial services being wound up and are being conducted in place of infrastructure development and are thus costing commercial units business and the rest of us jobs) and the various policy and beaurocratic systems which are being altered to back them up only pay heed to those parties who can demonstrate significant public support/demand and shout loudest about it. `
There are two questions we need to ask ourselves and each other:
Are we prepared to put ourselves out there, engage with and so generate public support?
How can we then shout about it and get the message out there?
The name doesn't make the slightest difference if we don't do those two things. And commercial archaeology doesn't really matter that much in the process of building up the profile of archaeology and heritage unless we get stuck in and make it matter. I think we all need to stop wandering around moaning about relevant but currently unsolvable issues (keep the pressure up, of course, but lets look at the bigger picture) and be prepared to put ourselves on the line and make what we do matter to the majority of people. I have concerns about some of the details to do with the 'MORTIMER' (or whatever anyone wants to call it) campaign, but the central tennet of it is that its up to you/us/anyone who's interested to form the agenda, do the legwork and perhaps we can reap a reward from it in our own professional aspirations and job security.
Its no good fussing and arguing over tiny irrelevances here when ultimately its down to us to get off our backsides and sort it out. And if you/I/we don't like the idea, nobody does this or anything else to the same effect and we end up with no part in the planning process, no curatorial archaeologists and very limited operational capacity for the commercial sector (i.e. most of us will be unemployed or doing something else), then its us who will have failed to take a hold of the opportunity.
The current difficulties and possible political onslaught to heritage might be unwarrented and undemocratic, but ultimately they can do what the like, regardless of whether we end up on the dole. What it does represent is an opportunity and a motivation for all of us to pick ourselves up, shake the last twenty years of festering crap off of our backs and start rebuilding this profession from the bottom up. We can give ourselves and our work some direct value to the people who ultimately end up paying for US in taxes and utility bills and yet can't quite see why they should have to fork out another few hundred quid or more to do some very interesting but, to them, not wholly necessary archaeology when they want to build the extension they've been saving up for the last twenty years to build (or somesuch other civil-sounding nonsense).
Love and peace,
GPS! xx(