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one who has read your william burroughs influenced cut up archaeology article probably wouldn t forget it in a hurry having been a field archaeologist since 2001 and writing widely on the subject how well do you think the world of archaeology is presented or made accessible to the public do you think a dichotomy exists between the public s perception of archaeology and its value compared to what the researchers and diggers actually do stuart well there s certainly problems i think we don t communicate with the public directly enough or certainly not at a serious academic level everything is mediated through a series of interchangeable tv presenters who may have backgrounds and expertise in totally different areas time team was fabulous and irritating in equal amounts and that s not just from a professional point of view a lot of the time they thought they were being clever but they weren t fooling anybody we certainly need more archaeology on tv and there s so many ways that it could be worked out the old documentary formats are far from irrelevant they just need people to figure out new ways of getting decent archaeological content into them but somehow some shows really need to exploit the potential for following longer and more complicated excavations i m sure it could be done but it needs to be a really fabulous set of sites really competently run and with beautiful project design and it needs to be cinematic a damp field in rural leicestershire just isn t going to cut it the main problem with tv isn t even the shows it s what the effect has been on popular publishing almost all the popular archaeology books are now written by or ghost written for the people from tv and linked in to the sales generated during the airing of a particular show it s all incredibly basic watered down and insipid mostly it s the same generic information endlessly recycled if you are lucky enough to still have a bookshop go and have a look at the history shelves you ll find they are teaming with books on a huge range of historical subjects and only a small percent are tied into tv shows if you find the little corner of the shelf where the archaeology books gather it s a very different and very sad story so it seems there is still an audience for proper books about history but we ve just not got that for archaeology maybe it s a fundamental problem with the subject matter that it just doesn t lend itself to interesting tales but i m sure it s also because we just don t have the skills that historians do in finding exciting ways to share our information that s where all the ancient aliens and mother goddess stuff comes in because people are interested in the archaeological landscapes they see around them and they want to know about them but they sure don t want to be bored and the way that stuff works is that firstly it s exciting and secondly it makes the reader feel special like they are being initiated into this realm of secret knowledge for all the horrendous liberties taken with the archaeological content those books are successful because they utilise a good dynamic so we need to be braver we need to start writing more interesting books more amusing books and i don t believe for one minute that we have to water down our concepts seriously thinking we re so clever that ordinary folk wouldn t understand us is ridiculously arrogant we just need to have a bit of faith that an audience we have been failing to reach is out there waiting for us to come to them on a more positive note we do lots of things right but mostly when we communicate directly i don t really like the term community archaeology it seems so medical what was wrong with having societies but anyway those groups provide fantastic interaction between the public and the archaeologists and they are thriving unfortunately they are only involving a small number of people there just isn t the capacity to reach everyone that might be interested and they tend to be a little bit elusive they don t reach out to new potential members so much i think there will always be a natural group size for things like that somewhere between 10 and 30 people probably better near the lower end it s a club structure operating at a very local scale it just doesn t work with big numbers so all the archaeology days and all of those things are great but they don t solve the issue of the missing popular archaeology same sort of thing with the public lectures you know when archaeologists go out and give their lectures at little groups and societies well that s fantastic and i love doing that sort of thing myself but at 30 people a time it s not like the message of archaeology is getting spread far and wide that s probably where the internet can step in i love the way archaeologists have all these new ways of communicating with the public and just as importantly with each other it s totally changed things in an awful lot of ways in particular because the academic structure really isn t carried over to the digital realm where people use all these weird nicknames and avatars and identity is hidden or even on facebook where identities are normally genuine people don t advertise their job title so much so you ll see a question go up on a board from a member of the public or another archaeologist looking for information and advice and they ll get all these useful answers really helpful stuff but if you know who the people are who are giving the information away it can be these really important archaeologists contractors with decades of experience state sector archaeologists university lecturers or just random gobshites like myself people are getting access to some really highly qualified people and they may not even realise it that just makes me very happy every time i see it tbom it seems that reality has read your reply and answered in the form of making the tv presenter dan snow the new president for the council of british archaeology stuart you have written movingly of the issues facing that much maligned face of archaeology the field archaeologist over at robert m chappel s blog having been a field archaeology for some 13 years now what in your view has improved and what conditions remain to be improved for field archaeologists in the uk and ireland more importantly what can people who run archaeological units or are field archaeologists themselves do to the improve conditions stuart yeah that thing on bob s blog is probably the most successful thing i ve ever written it got a ridiculous number of views i d like to think that s because it really hit the spot for a lot of people but of course you can never be sure i think the main point by the end of that piece is that the conditions in field archaeology could be having a much worse affect on peoples over all well being than has ever been acknowledged there s certainly every possible combination of circumstance that would promote ill health in particular poor mental health but we just don t know if it is a problem or not there is no data we have all these surveys of the profession but they are so limited in terms of what they ve examined we really need a sociological study of field archaeology that s kind of what the paper is about that someone needs to really go out and conduct some very in depth interviews with a great big pile of archaeologists and see what the situation is i suspect it would be bad but i wouldn t be that surprised if people are coping better than they might archaeologists are fairly rugged individuals and tend to have a bitter sense of humour that can see them through i d love to do it myself but it s such a huge project and i have no funding i m up to my eyes in unfunded hobby projects so i just can t take it on what i am doing at the moment is asking for people who have read the article to contribute their own experiences either as a comment at the bottom of the blog page or if they want to stay anonymous just to email it to me or send it to me on facebook or whatever that came about because quite a senior northern irish archaeologist wrote a lengthy and really emotional account of why she left the profession as a comment after the piece i was just blown away so i ve asked for more and any that come in will be included as an appendix in a physical version of the article that should be coming out next year i ll probably take the chance to make my own testimony and that would explain a lot about how i got interested in working on that topic in the first place the top of slievemore in county mayo during the summer of 2010 one of those moments when the great out doors really just takes the piss as for the problems facing field archaeologists in britain and ireland well the situations are quite different and that s going back for ten or fifteen years at least but in many ways it s equally bad it s no secret that there is a major problem with careers in field archaeology in terms of payment job security and career progression i don t really have any answers i m afraid the current mechanisms of competitive tendering in a deregulated market just don t allow for much progress to be made the institute for field archaeology and the institute of archaeologists of ireland are both in the same boat whilst they perform some important functions they just won t get involved in the issues which most field staff want them to archaeologists look for them to replicate some of the functions of unions but they can t or won t do it it doesn t help of course that many of the people running the companies that treat archaeological staff so poorly are heavily involved in these professional bodies the people directly responsible for the situation are members of these organisations and if there was a will to change it s always been in their power to make it happen it often seems like they are only involved in order to protect their own interests but that s probably an unfair and over simplistic view the involvement of the company owners provides a fantastic resource and they have such a wealth of knowledge about things the rest of us only ever get small glimpses of but at the same time it causes a lot of bitterness and distrust perhaps the company owners need to be separated off from the main body of the groups in some way like having them form an advisory panel that places their skills at the disposal of the rest of the membership but doesn t let them influence or even partake in voting i m sure both organisations would see membership rocket if there was a genuinely feeling that they were going to sort out these problems i know the diggers forum are trying to orchestrate a takeover of the ifa building a new world inside the shell of the old and all that and i wish them the best of luck it s the way the syndicalists in france managed it so it s a tactic that does have history personally though i think the only way it will change is through direct action david connolly at bajr has a mild version of this he s always saying that when archaeologists see poorly paid jobs they simply mustn t apply for them and he s right we can t fight against each other like that if no one takes the jobs at rock bottom prices they will have to offer more money so not taking work at lower than bajr rates is kind of a minimum requirement but i think it needs to go a little bit further than that i was disappointed that the representation for irish archaeologists group got diverted into a sort of sub committee within the iai i feel they would have been more effective as a separate organisation unfortunately at the moment the sub committee convened what had been a very lively and public discussion between lots of different people with lots of different views just ended and the handful of people that got onto the sub committee went off and that was that really the discussion group died and all of that energy and vitality evaporated i think history shows that with these struggles you need big popular movements an empowered collective of the staff secretive closed meetings between a handful of people on behalf of the rest well i wish them luck i really do but i do think it was a tactical error and made no secret of that at the time more interesting perhaps is what s going on with the unite union in ireland at the moment as they are making a big push to get archaeologists on board i guess there s a lot of scepticism about unions the profession isn t really their working class semi skilled natural environment but i m waiting to see how that goes in terms both of the level of engagement and to see if there s much in the way of a specific plan put forward jean o dowd is involved in that and she s bang on so i have some hope but whether that sinks or swims will really be down to unite producing a convincing document detailing the specifics of what they can do for archaeologists if enough of us join the sad thing is of course that the interests of the owners needn t be different from those of the staff if wages were higher contracts would be more expensive and the company owners could make more profit it s just something has to be done to take wage costs out of the equation when it comes to competitive tendering and no one is ever willing to make that first move the profession exists in an eternal mexican standoff the other really big thing we have to tackle once we have basic rates of pay sorted out is going to have to be pensions we need to find a way of getting a pension scheme for archaeologists something that can work for a career based on continually shifting between companies and regular bouts of unemployment this is were the iai and the ifa could really do something positive find a pension provider that can design a product with our needs find a way of companies being able to include a standard set of pension contributions along side wages because at the moment the reality for any archaeologist in my position is extremely grim i don t own a house and probably never will i ve never earned enough to buy one on occasion i have savings but every time i have a period of unemployment they get burnt up covering the bills and paying child maintenance at the moment if i were to retire i would be essentially destitute and the state would look after me but in 30 odd years time once the demographic crisis has kicked in forget about it when i think about my retirement i just see a cardboard home under a bridge in london and meals from a soup kitchen when my alcoholic compadres finally beat me to death for my spare change the local newspaper might run a small article about how i had once been an archaeologist and was known on the streets as the professor i know a lot of archaeologists in their mid to late thirties who have really been screwed over they went to college to get degrees fought like ninjas to get established worked in some pretty awful conditions because they were so committed to the work and basically they got nothing out of it at the end of the day they don t own houses they don t hav...
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