Comarch Wrote:A Chicken & Egg question = which came first, the funding or the interest? Come on! "Oh look. Some money. I've never had any interest in archaeology before, lets go dig some holes". Could anyone please give me an example where a community project took funds from a commercial job. Do you really believe that if all community archaeology stopped tomorrow that there would be a shed load of money put into training professionals? Why is it a fact that 15-20 years ago, when Community Archaeology did not exist as a concept, that a structured training program was never seen outside university (10 days at UCL! Big deal).
I will say this again - training professionals and letting people learn how archaeology is done are two clear separate things. We are all angry about the lack of investment in the workforce, so join a union or the Diggers Forum or spark a revolution and do something about it. CA is not the enemy. I'm not sure anyone is but if you want a professional structure in archaeology which parallels other professions we are all going to have to look at how we want archaeology to change in the future.
Preservation in situ - fine. But are we then to ban all research? Is it all going to be rescue from now on? Also most CA projects are non-intrusive. Digging - CA sites do not have to be done on sensitive archaeology. As I said, a lot can be learned from modern sites - its how to dig not what you dig for most people. If they are on a site with, say, Roman archaeology this has probably been run for years by a group of professionals as a distinct project. All this is so small as to be a pimple on the body of archaeology.
Hands up all those who have been uneasy on a site that has been rushed through... Be honest! I have seen some really dodgy stuff in my time.
Do you know anyone who thinks archaeology is "just a job"? Go and work somewhere else.
Ownership again. Why not? It was said earlier that units want to get rid of artifacts because they don't want the cost of storage, and send it back to local museums. "we dug it up now its your problem - we don't own it". You can't have it both ways. And yes, anyone should be able to 'do' archaeology. But they can't do commercial archaeology because it is done in particular circumstances - they can't come on a site as it would be trespass. In the past MSC people went on to do commercial archaeology and you have probably worked with them. So what? 99.9% did not. Only professional archaeologists can do a professional job in commercial archaeology, so don't worry, your safe.
Archaeology is not a masonic, secret society, with secret rituals and esoteric knowledge. I see this attitude as a result of archaeology being a young profession. It has little confidence in its own image as a job. You will not be asked to "hand over" your identity. You own your skills, you own your right to do a professional job, and nothing can take that away from you.
I have at no point suggested, or meant to suggest, that community projects were taking money from commercial ones - rather pointing out that (I assume) the proportion of money spent on training in the former, per person, is much higher than the latter despite the fact that the people employed by the latter are sometimes 'training' the former. If that makes sense.
I don't believe the notion of interest before funding. Funding enables more interesting projects to be proposed hence greater interest. You wouldn't tackle the excavation of a Roman villa without funding, if you got it you might find a lot more people were suddenly interested than if you were looking at a 19th century pig sty.
15-20 years ago commercial archaeology as it is now pretty much didn't exist either. The current division, if there is such a thing, is in part because back then nearly everyone involved was effectively an amateur. I certainly feel an occassional slight sense of resentment from those interested amateurs that I know that I get paid to be an archaeologist when they do it for fun (if only they knew).
I am not eligble to join and union or join the diggers' forum. I have tried to make things better from where I am, but you can't do it unilaterally. Like nuclear weapons, if you decide to do the right thing it doesn't mean you won't get wiped out by those that don't.
Archaeology as a profession is incredibly week, and it is hard to see how it can increase its strength.
