On Thu, 21 Aug 1997 11:40:33, Homer Thiel wrote:
 
>The SOPA/ROPA debate has repeatedly noted that one benefit of setting up
>ROPA wo
>uld be to have somewhere to submit grievances to other lapses in archaeological
>ethics.
>
>I know of two cases here in Arizona where ROPA would be useful. In one
>case an a
>rchaeological firm consistently misses sites or declares sites ineligible
>becaus
>e the area was once plowed. Needless to say, major sites would have been
>destroy
>ed except for the quick actions of interested archaeologists. In the
>second case
>, a prominent archaeologist has excavated at a number of sites over the last 10
>years and hasn't published a single report.
>
>I am not excited about paying additional dues and fees. However, with an
>organiz
>ation like ROPA, it might be possible to assemble data on firms/individuals and
>force them to act responsibly or get out of archaeology entirely.
>
>One problem I see is that when firms/individuals are censored by ROPA for their
>activities they will probably immediately resort to lawsuits against ROPA.
>How w
>ould legal costs be paid for?
 
======
 
If the archaeologists who you believe are violating SOPA/ROPA codes are
members of SOPA(or ROPA), then you or someone else could ask the grievance
coordinator to look into it and to determine if there is a credible basis
for your concerns.  The grievance process would then take it as far as the
evidence warrants.  The case could go nowhere, if your complaint turned out
to be based on flimsy or mistaken evidence, or it could be taken all the
way to censure or dismissal from SOPA/ROPA, if a serious problem was found
to exist.   This process will be effective for the field as a whole to the
extent that SOPA or ROPA registration becomes a standard part of becoming a
professional archaeologist.  SOPA has developed institutional standards for
organizations that do archaeological research, but these remain
"exhortatory" and there are at present no mechanisms for filing a grievance
against a firm as opposed to an individual.   I don't know what ACRA is
doing in this area.  SOPA is developing a process for certifying academic
fieldschools, which goes a step beyond the set of standards they developed
some years ago.  As I understand it, academic field schools which wished to
receive SOPA's stamp of approval would voluntarily submit information about
their program. (SOPA officers, correct me if I have not reported this
accurately).   Presumably ROPA would continue these initiatives.
 
With regard to the potential for lawsuits, I'll second Hester Davis'
comments about SOPA's successful history of carrying out grievance
procedures without these having resulted in litigation.  The key element
here is that someone who has been accepted to SOPA will have voluntarily
and explicitly agreed to participate in the SOPA grievance process if his
or her ethics or standards receive a credible challenge.  Anyone can of
course sue anyone for anything, but it is much harder to litigate against a
grievance process that you have voluntarily and formally agreed to
participate in, when that agreement was an absolutely central element in
your being accepted by an organization (in this case, SOPA or ROPA) in the
first place.
 
Since the nature of SOPA/ROPA and its relationship to other archaeological
organizations does not seem to be well-known, I'd like to expand this in my
usual long-winded way by offering some additional observations.
 
Broad-based membership organizations such as SAA have codes of ethics that
are valuable in an exhortatory way, but they have absolutely no way of
enforcing these standards without undergoing extremely high risks of
successful lawsuits against them.  When you sign up to become a member of
SAA, you agree to accept SAA's code of ethics.  Because SAA is an open
membership organization (which is as it should be), it does not require
that applicants demonstrate any qualifications for membership, it has no
established mechanisms for evaluating specific complaints about the ethics
of specific members, and it has no established mechanisms for expelling
members who violate its ethical code.  Since it was established 62 years
ago, SAA has welcomed as members not only professional archaeologists, but
students, avocational archaeologists, and members of the general public.
This has been one of its strengths and it is very unlikely to change.  If
SAA were to launch an ad hoc investigation of the behavior of a particular
member and attempt to expell that member as a result, I can guarantee you
that that they would be very likely to end up in court with a very high
probability of losing a lot of money.  That doesn't mean that the SAA
ethics committee, which Hester Davis chairs, can't do a lot of good by
promoting discussion of ethics, improving the organization's code of
ethics, publicizing problems in the field, generating hypothetical case
studies of ethical dilemmas, etc.  But the SAA ethics committee is not set
up to investigate or put pressure on individual SAA members to behave in a
more ethical and professional way.
 
Many professional fields depend on state-based licensing or certification
by boards that may include respected professionals as well as state
bureaucrats.  In other fields, the profession itself comes up with
mechanisms for accrediting people who have met certain standards of
training and experience, as well as mechanisms of various sorts for dealing
with failure to perform in a professional manner.   SOPA/ROPA is in this
second category.   In cases where the profession itself takes on this
responsibility, the accreditation/grievance process is usually carried out
by some kind of entity that is legally and structurally insulated from the
broad-based professional society that runs or sponsors it.  By
broad-basedprofessional society, I mean one like SAA or SHA that puts out
publications, has meetings where papers are read, promotes the interests of
its members through a government affairs program, engages in an active
program of public education, etc., etc.   ROPA, if established, would not
be a broad-based organization, but a special-purpose entity that would
focus on promulgating and enforcing standards of ethics and research
performance.  To the extent that it engaged in broader issues, it would be
to disseminate information about issues of professionalism and to promote
legislative or bureaucratic actions that supported professional standards.
This is what SOPA does now, and if ROPA is established, it would continue
this work, but hopefully with a larger percentage of the archaeological
profession participating, and with the explicit backing of the major
broad-based archaeological organizations.  That's the deal.