Cassie Hemphill > assumed that most professional
> archaeologists, especially those that subscribe to this list serve,
> would be familiar with the The Archaeology Channel ...
Your message reached a number of milieux well outside that in which it
originated.  I got a message inviting (challenging) me to give my money to
Dr Pettigrew whom I do not know personally and so all I have to go on is
what I read. I got it alongside I must say a whole lot of other spam, from
hair loss treatments to mortgage schemes and also buying diplomas of
academic achievement from "non accredited academic institutions" as well as
a handful which i did not even bother to read before deleting. The
difference between them is the first came to me through an academic
discussion list. So instead of deleting straight away I read it and then I
tried to initiate some discussion about it.


> If you'd conducted a modicum of background research
> before posting your message. [...] TAC is a
> respected research and education organization, reaching
> the public and your profession through extremely effective
> use of the internet.
Well, actually I have visited the website on more than one occasion. (does
that count as a "modicum of background research"?). I am not really sure
what to make of it. Anyone can of course found an organization and call it
the "Archaeological Legacy Institute" or any other high-sounding title and
write an idealistic mission statement covering a wide range of problems and
produce dozens of reasons why any company or individual would want to
sponsor it. As for the "research" conducted by the "Institute", I could not
find much mention of that in Dr Pettigrew's latest "status report", so it
would be difficult to assess what kind of respect it has generated in the
profession from that.

> Apparently, you must not [...] in fact, support any charitable
> organizations!  If you did, you would be well aware that challenge
> grants--from  both anonymous and named donors--are a well
> established method of increasing donations.
Not here they aren't. People (including myself) give money because they
believe in the cause and not because they want to compete with somebody
else.

What though I asked - and I will ask again - is how in this case the
sponsor who decides to "accept the challenge" can be sure that their
donation will indeed be matched by the anonymous donor, apart from your
say-so that this will not be purely "on paper"?

If TAC or the ALI or whatever it is really is a bona fide educational
organization of the stature it claims to be, then surely in order to prove
its legitimacy when raising funds from potential donors, it could let them
have a list of the financial support it has applied for and received from
official grant-giving organizations to accompany its more gimmicky
fund-raising attempts such as this one. The last status report says that ten
had been applied for.

> I hope that after you've had a chance to look at the website,
> you'll appreciate the benefits Dr. Pettigrew's vision and
> hard work are bringing to your profession and the world in
> general.
Well, to be frank, I am not at all convinced of that.  Video programs which
start with the habitual mellow male American voice intoning intensely:
"There are mysteries here, mysteries covered by the centuries..." and
followed by a slide show of mystically-lit artefacts only encourage the
Indiana Jones view of the discipline, and there is enough of that already in
the media. Of the 26 videos currently on offer, 15  were of the United
States (many of them on the mound-builders), three Mesoamerica, four Greece
and Rome. Hardly very representative. Few of the titles suggest that they
are in any major way connected specifically with the conservation of the
archaeological heritage, although that is one of the major points stressed
in the mission statement. Personally, although I fully agree that one of the
things we should do is to make the results of our work available to a wider
audience,  I really do not see how these TAC videos are bringing any more
benefit to my branch of the profession than (say) the better efforts of
Discovery Channel and National Geographic. Cassie Hemphill is obviously
sincere in her absolute belief in the values of TAC. Other list-members can
however look at the website themselves, watch a few of the videos, and
decide for themselves.

Paul Barford