27th April 2011, 02:05 PM
(This post was last modified: 27th April 2011, 02:09 PM by the invisible man.)
Broadly, I would agree with Troll, especially on the issue of public access to grey lit - but in principle it is in the public domain anyway: this just needs to be more the fact than the principle. I wouldn't be that keen on keeping it in schools, for all sorts of reasons, and I certainly wouldn't want to have to write in a key-stage manner. The main thing is that it is somewhere and available. Libraries (assuming we'll still have them........) are fine, but the Local History Units/HER seem the logical place to me. Err, assuming we'll still have them...). What is to be done with pre-planning stuff is theproblem of course. Maybe there could be a stipulation for it to become public after say one year? But how does it differ from a hypothetical person, a landowner, who decides to pay for an excavation, or perhaps geophysics, in his extensive grounds? It's not really practical to enforce publication.
Strictly speaking nobody owns or can own archaeology, as archaeology is a study, a practice, not a physical entity. If we are referring to archaeological remains, the physical remains, the contexts and layers, the finds etc, which can be physically owned. Whether it ought to be is another matter: ideally any artefacts over, I don't know, say 500 years perhaps, should be publicly owned, but that'll never happen. It could at least be mandatory to make finds publicly accessible. But how do you insist upon access to or public ownership of below-ground remains?
There is also the non-physical stuff, the knowledge, the data (dangerously close to you-know-what here!) call it what you will, which most certainly can - and should - be publicly owned and available and I believe is what Troll is referring to.
Strictly speaking nobody owns or can own archaeology, as archaeology is a study, a practice, not a physical entity. If we are referring to archaeological remains, the physical remains, the contexts and layers, the finds etc, which can be physically owned. Whether it ought to be is another matter: ideally any artefacts over, I don't know, say 500 years perhaps, should be publicly owned, but that'll never happen. It could at least be mandatory to make finds publicly accessible. But how do you insist upon access to or public ownership of below-ground remains?
There is also the non-physical stuff, the knowledge, the data (dangerously close to you-know-what here!) call it what you will, which most certainly can - and should - be publicly owned and available and I believe is what Troll is referring to.