Dear all, 

In view of the discussions members of the list might like to participate in this survey (apologies for cross-posting)

With best wishes

Gill

Dear Sir / Madam, 

We kindly ask you to participate in an online-survey about data access in archaeological research. With your support, we will be able to bring archaeological information systems a step forward.

The survey addresses researchers in archaeology, directors of archaeological research institutes and managers of digital data repositories. It explores user requirements, current practices, and gaps with regard to the access to research data in archaeology. It approximately takes about 20 minutes.

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1405631/ARIADNE-Stakeholder-Survey

The survey is part of the ARIADNE project, an e-infrastructure project funded by the European Commission under the Community's Seventh Framework Programme (http://www.ariadne-infrastructure.eu/). The survey is managed by Salzburg Research GmbH on behalf of the ARIADNE project consortium. Contact details are available on the start page of the online questionnaire.

Win an iPad: With a bit of luck you can win one of two iPads (or other tablet computers - depending on the winner's choice), which will be raffled off among all respondents.

Thank you very much for taking the time,

best regards

Sandra Schoen (Schön) and Hannes Selhofer
 

-----Original Message-----
From: The archaeobotany mailing list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andrew Fairbairn
Sent: 04 December 2013 00:07
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Mind the gap: commercial versus research environmental archaeology - how do we reduce it?

Dear all,

I woke up this morning to a worryingly full inbox and then saw that many of those emails were on this discussion thread. Rather than consisting of the usual mix of spam and administrivia, they were worth reading! As many of you may know, I have worked in Australia for 13 or so years, but trained and worked for a while in the UK environmental archaeology scene. The situation in Australia is very different to that in the UK but I thought some comments may add to the perspectives expressed so far. 

Context: Australia has a large and well paid (median wages 2010 $93,000 pa) archaeological professional community which has grown as a result of more than a decade of economic expansion propelled by mining, which of course requires archaeological enquiry as part of environmental and cultural threat management. The university sector is small, with c.110 full time academic archaeologists, many of those contract-based staff (postdocs etc). Consulting is a much larger part of the discipline, run by a range of private businesses from sole traders to larger multi-disciplinary corporations. 

Environmental archaeology is not well developed in Australia but is present in a modest way in the consulting sector and more obviously in the academic sector. Very few detailed analyses in any environmental archaeology sub-discipline are undertaken, though this is changing as archaeologists with those disciplines are being employed in universities and consulting companies. There is a recognised base-skills gap in Australia, but, as I know from my own department, that we are now building up the skill base and reference sets across a wide range of disciplines, so see where we are in 5-10 years. Last year's Australian Archaeological Association conference showed that we have come a long way in a few years. At present, studies of maritime exploitation, especially the use of shellfish, are well developed as are pollen-based investigations of landscapes and vegetation change. Vertebrate zooarchaeology is also on the move in the right direction, as are macrobotanical analyses and stable isotope studies.

Relatively few consulting projects budget for any detailed environmental archaeology work meaning that beyond fauna, relatively few projects come up for tender. As for the gap between consulting and research sectors: this is very small. In most cases (though not all) the same people work across both and the professional community here is relatively well integrated. This reflects the overall small community size, the small number of specialists, the requirement for multi-million dollar professional indemnity insurance and the profession's historical development from the university sector to the business world. Most clients here are large companies and simply do not accept uninsured operators, preferring to work with other large corporations. In many cases university specialists are commissioned to do research work for the larger operators and most universities now welcome that work. I know that we do! Most of the independents I know of have good relationships with university departments and are often honoraries or adjuncts. Few of them seem to last long outside a business umbrella and do environmental specialist work as one of a number of jobs. 

Many of the best consulting archaeologists in Australia are also high-powered academics and move between those worlds, leading in publication and intellectual direction. Universities are still seen as the main training bodies for the profession and there is no stigma concerning working in consulting. In fact we tell students that if they do not work in both sectors they are losing out on experience and money, as well as limiting their career prospects. My experience in the UK, albeit >10 years ago, was quite different in this regard and I saw many academic archaeologists snub their noses at the rescue community.
On a more formal level, the peak academic funding body (Australian Research Council or ARC) has a well-funded post-doctoral research program (Linkage Projects - see listed at http://www.arc.gov.au/ncgp/default.htm) which encourages research with industrial partners, including mining companies, state governments etc etc. To qualify the project must receive a % contribution from an industrial partner. There have been many, well-funded and very successful archaeology linkage projects. The success rate for most ARC grant schemes in 15-20%. Linkage Projects are usually in the 35-50% bracket! This means there is very direct high-level encouragement for industrial-research linkages.

We have a huge problem with grey literature and access to consulting reports. Many are under "commercial in confidence" agreements and several states - Australian archaeology legislation varies by state - do not have centralised repositories for reports or even a requirement to make them available to the public. The fragmented state of archaeological legislation and the repositories makes doing large scale research pretty hard. Having said that in 2012 a new initiative supported by many universities and professional organisations aimed to fix that. The Federated Archaeological Information Management System (https://www.fedarch.org/wordpress/) aims to provide a new universal, online platform for storing and accessing data from all manner of projects and several of us are contributing to make sure that environmental archaeology datasets are included. We hope that improves things.

So, quite different, eh? We are still taking baby steps in getting environmental archaeology properly developed and resourced, but things are getting better. It will be interesting to see whether a split develops between the consulting and university sectors as things develop here, but I hope not, as we all benefit from that cross-fertilisation of experience and ideas.

Hope this is of interest. Better get back to that admin.... 

Cheers
Andy

---------------------------
Dr Andrew Fairbairn,
Senior Lecturer in Archaeology

New website: http://boncuklu.org

School of Social Science | The University of Queensland | Brisbane Queensland 4072 | Australia | Office: Rm 331, Michie Buidling telephone 61 7 336 52780  |  fax 61 7 336 51544  |  email [log in to unmask] | web www.socialscience.uq.edu.au Unless stated otherwise this email represents only the views of the sender and not the views of The University of Queensland

________________________________________
From: The archaeobotany mailing list [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Liz Pearson [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, 4 December 2013 2:47 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Mind the gap: commercial versus research environmental archaeology - how do we reduce it?

Many thanks to everyone responding to this topic. We've had many insightful comments on on-line databases (and whether they should be mainted by one organisation, or open to individuals contribute to), examples of collaborations between research and commercial archaeologists, interest in mentoring, the size of the dataset 'out there', not to mention the material archives sitting lonely and unloved on museum shelves.

Sorry to have taken some time to respond, but I've been watching the comments coming in with interest whilst juggling projects in various degrees of completion. We have much to consider, and rather than respond in detail to the comments coming in now, I think I'd best liaise with Wendy, and then we will get back to you all and will find the best way to proceed. Clearly this is a topic that is taking on some importance.

Regards,

Liz

Senior Environmental Archaeologist
Worcestershire Archaeology
The Hive
Sawmill Walk
Worcester WR1 3PB

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