I think pat you are a bit out of touch in your museum. The volunteer/student
system lingers on in Britain on but only just. CRM (in our case PPG15 & 16)
and the commercialisation of archaeology rules!  The big difference is that
sites in Britain are protected on private as well as public land- none of
that yankee frontier individualism here. I earn my living in CRM (sorry
pocket money-well not even that at the moment as after 14 years regularly
turning work away I am now unemployed for the first time in british
archaeology and my SHA sub is coming up- help!) but I truly hate it.
Archaeology in Britain is in crisis. We are having far greater problems than
the Americans in producing a percentage of good work under CRM. Most of the
many units I work for haven't had a decent project in 2 years and are laying
off people left, right and centre- specialists first. I know one
archaeologist giving up his well paid job as a county unit director to
free-lance (he must be mad) because he would rather stack supermarket shelves
than work in CRM anymore. Yes we need to think about preservation but we are
producing a generation of archaeologists who like digging and drinking as we
did in the good old days of rescue archaeology but have no interest in what
it means. Well how can you when the idea is to stop digging the moment you
find an archaeological level and recommend concrete rafting. The government
structures such as english heritage have not adapted to the new situation
they helped create. Well anyway Ned Heite's comments ring very true for the
UK as well as the US.
I don't know what the solution is but British archaeology is in a mess.
Anyway I can be found in Bruges Bertjes bar off the Steenstraat in Brugge
(Bruges) if anyone wants a moan about archaeology (or discuss belgian
politics) at the Medieval Europe conference in october. Mine is a Rodenbach-
the sour red beer.
Paul Courtney