18th November 2005, 01:50 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by troll
My main point here is that the general misconceptions (some would say dillusional behaviour) of the main players clouds the potential of a coherent and integrated approach required.Not only that, it is also high time that field archaeologists are seen as specialists in their own field and not (as seems to be common)-the immature and ignorant labourers who do the sticky thing on the very end of a long process innitiated and orchestrated by the real(grown-up)professionals upstairs.
Coming from a multi-dicipliniary consultancy, with specialists ranging from ecologists, noise pollution, water pollution, air quality just within the environment team, never mind the landscape architects, engineers etc who all have inputs into the same projects, it is easy to see how difficult it is to pull together so many people for a project to obtain a common objective. You also get stuck into projects at higher up the scale, with management here dealing directly with the client (sometimes huge multinational companies) and planning conditions etc at their inception. Your perspective changes when you are in an environment like this. How could it do otherwise. The fieldork that archaeologists do, despite being very important in the discharge of planning conditions, is the end result of a long process of assessment and negotiation with the client, local curators etc etc. Sometimes a very long and exhaustive process. The "coherent and integrated approach" happens at a high level with varying degrees of success. It ain't easy with such large projects and people from all specialisms to have a perfectly planned approach. I doubt that exists. You're partially right Troll that people lack respect for archaeologists, but that's only because of weak and innefectual curators have long let developers walk all over them whilst ecologists and other specialists have taken a much more hard-nosed approach to dealing with clients, leading to much better prepared and integrated systems to provide for newt rescue etc
By the time a field team make it on to site, the consultant/engineer/agent (suit[8D]) just wants an efficient job to be done and feldwork to go smoothly to satisfy the relevant parties. He/she does regard the archaeologists on site as specialists....they just don't feel the need to hand out medals on site. They just want to get the fieldwork out of the way with the minimum of fuss. Why should field archaeologists be treated like royalty or with any difference to other contractors on site (chippies, brickies, electricians, builders, geotech people). Those are all jobs with varying amounts of skill which take years to become good at. Their skills are just more at a premium because of demand, hence their better wages.