Unless you are in a secure tenured academic position that you can't be
shifted from until you retire money and politics has a major effect on what
and how you can do archaeology, as what is currently happening to a lot of
colleagues outside of CRM is demonstrating. 

Archaeologists in the public sector and CRM firms where archaeology is a
central part of the development process have in the past had more chance to
carry out more costly research options and spend more time looking at
research questions which are not core to development compliance.  It is
harder to do that when providing an archaeologist comes somewhat lower in
the list of development requirements then providing on-site toilets. 

When continually faced with vastly inadequate budgets to do justice to the
job in hand the archaeologist is faced with an on-going battle with ethics.
The question to be faced is:

 How can I do justice to the archaeology when I am not given the time or
money to do so? 

The answer I have developed is to get creative and effective with how I do
fieldwork to get the most done in the time available then ALWAYS lose the
time battle with report writing and spend more time on the report then I am
paid for. Academic research is done on the side and I try to include the CRM
stuff as much as possible but I know that the majority of my reports are
sitting in back rooms never to see the light of day again once the
development project is finished. It's depressing. 

One answer is to at least get the 'grey literature' of CRM reports placed
somewhere on-line where researchers can at least access them. New South
Wales are currently doing that, I can't get my Heritage Council to entertain
the idea so am trying to put my reports on-line myself as I get client
permission. But again no-one is paying me to do that and the mortgage does
need to be paid so process is slow. 

So my answer to the ethical question I face every day is to take on a lot of
unpaid work to keep the standards up but you can't blame the ones who decide
to just do what they are paid to do.

I work in CRM obviously, in Western Australia I am also an academic author
and public archaeologist, because politicians won't value archaeology more
unless their voters do.

Gaye Nayton
Heritage Archaeologist

>> Hello all,
>> As part of an archaeological ethics course I have been asked to 
>> observe and/or participate in an ethical conversation on a listserv,
forum, etc.
>> I thought it could be interesting to poll Histarch with a simple, 
>> two-part question:
>>
>> 1) What do you think is the single most important ethical concern for 
>> archaeologists today?
>>
>> 2) Very briefly, how do you define yourself as an archaeologist? (ie 
>> what sector do you work in, etc.)
>>
>> Your answers will be used only to stimulate discussion in class, and 
>> I won t share any personal or identifying information. Also, please 
>> feel free to shoot me an email off-list if you would be more 
>> comfortable doing so.
>>
>> Thanks in advance to those of you who respond, Ryan