26th January 2013, 09:44 AM
While I agree wages, terms and conditions are poor, etc one only needs to look at every other contractor on a building site and compare their equipment etc to the grubby archaeologists scrabbling about in a hole to see that. there is a real risk that we will be come too expensive, and thus risk coming to the attention of the red tape cutters.
curators put too many conditions on nonsense, in Scotland some 70% of evaluations and watching briefs yield negative results and most units prefer a negative site. As soon as they find something budgets are out of the window. This de-skills the team but keeps units going.
Id rather we did fewer sites and did them better, some units will have to go to the wall, but this would reduce the overall cost of archaeology and allow the wages of those that remains to go up.
curators put too many conditions on nonsense, in Scotland some 70% of evaluations and watching briefs yield negative results and most units prefer a negative site. As soon as they find something budgets are out of the window. This de-skills the team but keeps units going.
Id rather we did fewer sites and did them better, some units will have to go to the wall, but this would reduce the overall cost of archaeology and allow the wages of those that remains to go up.