17th April 2006, 11:39 AM
David,
How Mortimer Wheeler (see page 53 Archaeology from the earth). He descibes how money was paid to people for finding artefacts and he suggest was a form of bribed honesty. He suggested that it was not a good thing largely because it made the accounting harder. Similarly the notion of people being paid more for finding less sites is a very early 90s view of private sector archaeology.
What I am trying to explore is if any none time based payement system to archaeologists could work. Many years ago for example I got paid by the thin section. As I originally said care would have to be taken not to reduce quality. On site would be probably be hardest place to implement it but these days much archaeology does not happen on site.
In my own work I have pretty standard times for most tasks eg drawing up an WSI, sending out tenders etc which I use for costing things. If I am on a fixed price I make more money by doing things quicker. To a degree the same is true of a contracting unit working on a fixed price - they dig faster the unit makes more money.
On site take an adult skeleton assumming good weather and all other factors (like skill and quality) except the efficiency of work are equal then people should take the same time to excavate them. If somebody can do the same standard of work faster should they be paid more?
By the same token if an archaeological company worked as a collective with all the profits being shared would this be a bad thing?
We (almost) accept that archaeology is a profit making activity now so is there a mechanism by which the employee can share in those profits?
Peter Wardle
How Mortimer Wheeler (see page 53 Archaeology from the earth). He descibes how money was paid to people for finding artefacts and he suggest was a form of bribed honesty. He suggested that it was not a good thing largely because it made the accounting harder. Similarly the notion of people being paid more for finding less sites is a very early 90s view of private sector archaeology.
What I am trying to explore is if any none time based payement system to archaeologists could work. Many years ago for example I got paid by the thin section. As I originally said care would have to be taken not to reduce quality. On site would be probably be hardest place to implement it but these days much archaeology does not happen on site.
In my own work I have pretty standard times for most tasks eg drawing up an WSI, sending out tenders etc which I use for costing things. If I am on a fixed price I make more money by doing things quicker. To a degree the same is true of a contracting unit working on a fixed price - they dig faster the unit makes more money.
On site take an adult skeleton assumming good weather and all other factors (like skill and quality) except the efficiency of work are equal then people should take the same time to excavate them. If somebody can do the same standard of work faster should they be paid more?
By the same token if an archaeological company worked as a collective with all the profits being shared would this be a bad thing?
We (almost) accept that archaeology is a profit making activity now so is there a mechanism by which the employee can share in those profits?
Peter Wardle