In response to such a suggestion of tighter development control, I am sure there will be those in field units who will predict job losses. Contracting means cheap tenders, rushed excavations, skimped post-ex and less involvement by specialists. It means that museums are left with collections and archives they cannot store or afford to display. By contrast, a proper strategy for archaeology, a funded strategy, would create more jobs, and more stable jobs. Rather than endless assessments involving bits of keyhole archaeology to produce many useless and unco-ordinated snippets of information, expenditure could be channelled to permit proper research objectives, and include full excavations that actually resolved archaeological sites, not simply stopping dead at the edge of a development an agenda driven by archaeological concerns and not just the financial objectives of developers.
Tory government is notorious for having no strategy in any field.
They have no integrated transport strategy, no energy strategy, no overall strategy for food safety or public health. Rather than planned objectives, their actions are opportunistic, influenced by donations to Central Office or temporary public concerns. The situation of archaeology reflects this lack of strategic objectives that the market will decide becomes all too obviously absurd when we consider the research objectives of archaeology. The market means the he or she who pays the piper will, despite our best intentions, always call the tune. At present the house builders, road constructors and mineral extractors are deciding the future of British archaeology.