Public involvement in Commercial archaeology

[troll]

I think that there are strong ethical reasons for public involvement.When we talk about it we generally envisage the practical aspects of "inclusion" in the context of potentially dangerous working conditions.In particular, It seems that in a commercial environment, and on the whole, the public enjoy very little "involvement". It was a while ago on this forum but I remember someone estimating that around 14,000 archaeological interventions are thought to take place in a given year.In the current climate of development it would be reasonable to assume an exponential rise over the next few years too.If we are honest, the tenet of "preserve in situ" does`nt really get a look-in and "preserve by record" results largely in the destruction of the resource. Seems to me that on such a scale, we at least should have the decency to let the public see what they are about to lose! It follows that we should also include the public in decision-making at the planning level in a more transparent and effective way-something the current Government may be moving away from.I don`t think that we can continue to discuss public involvement seriously until we move away from the "how do we let them on to our sites.." mentality.The dangerous sites issue could easily be side-stepped by a range of mitigations from early consultation,project designs to web-cam live feeds.There are already plenty of developers who can appreciate the intrinsic value of social inclusion particularly where there are sensitive environmental factors to take into account.Commercial archaeology can fail to communicate with the public and there are those who would argue that it is none of the publics business anyway.There are oodles of ways that the public could and in my view should, get involved in commercial archaeology.And its not all about marigold gloves and knee-pads either

..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)