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Parthenon Marbles Return “Up to the British Museum”! & Why is Archaeology Pay So BAD? – WB 19th Nov 2021
80 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to Watching Brief. As the name implies, each week Marc (Mr Soup) & Andy Brockman of the Pipeline (Where history is tomorrow's news) cast an eye over news stories, topical media and entertainment and discuss and debate what they find.
0:00 Introduction
2:02 Parthenon Marbles Closer to Return?
22:26 Why is the Pay Archaeology so Bad?
***
Link of the Week:
HS2 Rail Extension to Leeds set to be scrapped:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59292120
***
Links:
Return of Parthenon marbles is up to British Museum, says No. 10:
Greek Prime Minister to Challenge Boris Johnson over Return of ‘stolen’ Elgin Marbles:
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/greek-prime-minister-challenge-boris-6212043
Greek PM to Appeal to British Public for Return of Parthenon Marbles:
Ex-Chancellor George Osborne Appointed as New British Museum Chairman:
Easter Islanders Call for Return of Statue from British Museum:
***
Why is the pay in contract archaeology so bad?
https://twitter.com/LeftistDadJokes/status/1459688929012158466
CIfA Minimum Salaries from April 2018:
https://archaeologists.net/news/cifa-minimum-salaries-april-2018-1512728386
CIfA Current Salary Recommendation 2021:
https://www.archaeologists.net/practices/salary
CIfA Policy Statement on Pay in Archaeology:
https://www.archaeologists.net/practices/pay
Archaeology Pay & Training: Can The Industry Do More?
https://www.archaeologists.net/sites/default/files/DF_Prospect_conference_proceedings_2013.pdf
Profiling the Profession 2020:
https://profilingtheprofession.org.uk/2-11-archaeologists-qualifications/
https://profilingtheprofession.org.uk/1-4-organisations-skills-needs-development/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Soupcast and Archaeosoup Towers
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Soupcast, coming to you from Archaeosoup Towers. By popular demand, we're taking selected videos from the Archaeosoup back catalogue and bringing them to you as convenient podcasts. As the name implies, with Archaeosoup you get a bit of everything thrown into the pot. Archaeology, discussion, humour and debate. You can find out more at archaeosoup.com. So sit back, relax and enjoy our hearty helping of Archaeosoup.
WatchingBrief: Infrastructure's Impact on Archaeology
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to WatchingBrief for the week of the 15th of November 2021. I am joined as ever by my, well apparently, benefiting from a soon to be greatly upgraded rail network in the south of England, Mr Andy Brockman. Good morning Andy.
00:00:59
Speaker
Good morning. Actually, we're within a couple of miles of the new East Thames Tunnel Crossing, which is being built and nobody can think why. Why increase road capacity at a time when you're trying to discourage people from using the roads, but anyway.
00:01:15
Speaker
That's another story. It's almost as though there's no joined up thinking about our infrastructure and actually this may be a story that we talk about in the next month or so because the HS2 high-speed rail link that was going to connect different parts of the country has been grossly reduced or will be certainly grossly reduced in announcements today.
00:01:40
Speaker
from government and that will have an impact on commercial archaeology in Britain. But regardless of that and that unfolding news story, our ongoing watching brief, our mission continues to discuss the archaeological news of the week and bring it here to you guys to discuss and augment below with your conversation and commentary.
What is the Debate Over the Parthenon Marbles?
00:02:01
Speaker
and this week we have an opening gambit about the Parthenon marbles or the Elgin marble so-called and then we have a follow-up which was actually inspired by a tweet but leads quite nicely into a realm that we'll probably be touching on in more detail.
00:02:19
Speaker
and very specifically next week. So strap in and we shall begin. So number one for the week, our first story. We'll start with the non-controversial one.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, starting with the one that's not remotely controversial. This is a headline from The Guardian to kick us off. Return of the Parthenon marbles is up to the British Museum, says number 10. Spokesperson's comments before Boris Johnson was set to meet the Greek Prime Minister appear to signal a softening of position when it comes to relinquishing potentially the marbles back to Athens.
00:03:02
Speaker
returning the Parthenon marbles to Greece is a matter for the British Museum, Downing Street has said, and apparently this is reversing a long-standing UK government position to the idea reiterated by Boris Johnson as recently as March. Can I just point out here, far bit for me to suggest that Downing Street is being a bit disingenuous here, but they are. In what way? Go on.
00:03:32
Speaker
Well look, new viewers start here.
Historical Context of the Parthenon Marbles
00:03:37
Speaker
You might have heard of the Parthenon Marbles and the British Museum. You might have heard about that. Anyway, go on. Absolutely.
00:03:50
Speaker
deal that would have been envied by Dr. Jones of that famous museum, Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the sublime pause of the Ottoman Empire, did a deal in Athens in the early 19th century to recover some of the Parthenon frees.
00:04:13
Speaker
and the deal was done, the material was exported to the UK. Faced with bankruptcy apparently, Lord Elgin attempted to sell it to the new, relatively then new British Museum. The deal was vetted to see that he did actually have legal ownership and title and it satisfied the lawyers at the time and the Parthenon marbles were absorbed into the British Museum's collection.
00:04:43
Speaker
Fast forward. Well and it should be said, before we fast forward, it should be said that supposedly Elgin observed the poor state of the marbles. He was struck by how the poor state of the Parthenon monument, at the time it was being used as army barracks and supposedly soldiers from the Ottoman Empire were using the frieze as target practice. So they were taking pot shots at the marbles. So
00:05:10
Speaker
apparently this was part of his reason. He had gone there to observe and to draw them and he decided to try and purchase them. So I just thought I'd just mention that. It's a circumstance, yeah. Yeah, and actually you're correct about that. It's one of those circumstances where we're dealing with a lot of contentious history but there are broad agreements on the
00:05:38
Speaker
on the actual origins of the purchase. And I think we have to bear in mind as well that Elgin is operating within that classical tradition of the grand classical civilization is the precursor to Western civilization and so on. So this is
00:05:56
Speaker
We mustn't discount a genuinely idealistic motive for wanting to preserve them on his part. It's the fact that he wanted to preserve them in London, not in Athens, that is the contentious issue.
00:06:12
Speaker
But also, I can't believe I'm making so many defences here of his actions, but also it should be born in mind as well. At the time, correctly or incorrectly, he had good reason to think that London was the inheritor of Western civilisation. The British Empire was in ascendancy and they very much saw themselves as custodians of the legacy of the classical world. So again, little caveats.
00:06:43
Speaker
Let's fast forward now.
Legal Challenges for Returning the Parthenon Marbles
00:06:44
Speaker
Okay, go ahead. Okay, so we'll fast forward to the late 20th century and the Greek government. And remember, the state of Greece didn't exist at the time that Elgin made his deal with the Ottoman Empire. So the most famously, actually, the actor and then culture minister Molina Makiri,
00:07:07
Speaker
began to campaign to have the marbles returned to Athens. The Greeks have built a fabulous museum at the foot of the Acropolis to house what remained of the path and freezes after Elgin had taken the material that formed part of the synology display.
00:07:30
Speaker
And it's been an ongoing cultural touchstone really between the British government, the Greek government and the museum and archaeology community for the last 40 years or so.
00:07:47
Speaker
And the latest iteration of the argument has come because Boris Johnson, British prime minister, famously starves himself as a classicist, studied classics in Oxford, often likes to quote himself, one of his favorite historical characters is Pericles, who of course was instrumental in creating the Acropolis as we know it now. But he was due to meet the Greek prime minister, Keryakos Mitsotakis, this week.
00:08:14
Speaker
and ahead of the talks Mr Tarkis made it clear that he was going to raise the issue of the path on the marbles being returned to Greece. The other piece of background that our viewer needs to be aware of is as we mentioned before when we've covered this on watching brief that
00:08:34
Speaker
the British Museum collection is protected by law. The trustees can't deaccession material without basically a change in the law unless it's a duplicate or various other strict criteria are in place. And that's really what I'm saying, Downey Street saying it's an issue for trustees is being disingenuous.
00:08:59
Speaker
as things stand at the moment, if the board of trustees of the British Museum wanted to return the path from the marbles to Athens, they could only do so in terms of relinquishing ownership if the law was changed and that requires an initiative from government. Now there are other ways it could be accomplished like for example they could choose possibly to loan material
00:09:27
Speaker
And in that sense, they do have more agency perhaps than might've been thought. And presumably in accepting alone, the recipient is also accepting the ownership of the person who is lonely. Precisely. That's precisely the problem. That's precisely the problem. Now, it would appear that in addition to the fact that you appear to have a nuclear reactor outside your window at the moment,
00:09:57
Speaker
Actually it's my halo and you're lucky you're not close enough, you can smell my odorous sanctity as well. Blinded by your holiness and your enlightenment. I'm gonna be carried off in a fiery chariot in a moment. Ancient aliens. Sweet! This is a very serious subject. It is.
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, okay, serious face. Now, the point is that there were hints that there might be, for example, some sort of quip pro quo. It's been suggested. And in fact, it's caused some problems apparently in the Greek media.
00:10:41
Speaker
The, for example, the British Museum might be loaned in exchange for sending back the Parthenon marbles might be loaned for example material that's never previously left Greece like for example the so called Golden Mask of Agamemnon that was found by Schliemann at Mycenae.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, because again, one of the criticisms of the potential return has been, well, it would leave a huge hole, well, a very large room, empty room in the British Museum and how would they fill it? And then there are other things as well, like the precedent that's being set for, you know, is every single item a contested item.
00:11:27
Speaker
people argue that actually the purchase at the time was perfectly legal. So under international law, the Greeks can call on good will, but they don't have a legal standing in terms of trying to get this material back to Athens.
00:11:49
Speaker
But it's interesting though that Johnson moved to shift the focus of this conversation presumably away from a face-to-face dismissal of the notion of a return. The Greek Prime Minister at a gathering at the Science Museum within an hour of meeting Boris Johnson said, my intention is to continue working hard until there, the part of the Marble's final return to the Acropolis Museum,
00:12:16
Speaker
is complete. On Wednesday Greek officials downplayed Johnson's insistence that the issue was a matter for the British Museum to resolve, calling his stance utterly predictable.
Cultural Restitution Trends and the Parthenon Marbles
00:12:28
Speaker
Is that essentially saying he was passing the book being slightly, I don't know, maybe a bit of a coward in that sense? The current Prime Minister of Greece is the first to have formally raised the Parliament marbles actually at Downing Street.
00:12:45
Speaker
and echoing his conviction that the campaign should now prioritise UK citizens. He actually made an appearance on Good Morning Britain, one of the UK's main morning TV shows, to which actually, seemingly, there was a very positive response
00:13:07
Speaker
He's now basically shifting towards the notion that, to quote, it will be the British public opinion that decisively tips the scales in the favour of the just Greek demand. And actually, so that was a member of the Greek delegation that said that. And is that really where we're moving towards? Because we've also seen in recent months and years a growing international
00:13:37
Speaker
consensus and acts of reparation and restoration of, for example, the aspects of the Benin Bronzes. Various museums here in the UK, museums in Europe, museums in America are sort of starting to promise to return what they have, growing seemingly public opinion and pressure against institutions like the British Museum on that front. Is he onto a winner, the Greek Prime Minister?
00:14:10
Speaker
Look, Mr Tarkist himself said that, and he said quote, museums around the world are increasingly working to share, return, reunite or lend exhibits on an unprecedented scale. And he's absolutely right about that. And we've even seen in the commercial world, we've seen sales, for example, of the material, cultural material belonging to native peoples, which was allegedly stolen. We've seen sales stopped in a number of
00:14:38
Speaker
auction houses in the past few years.
00:14:42
Speaker
this is an argument where the doll posts have moved and I think many would say many people say quite rightly have moved. People are examining the ethics of how museum collections were built up over the years and whether it is appropriate to display let alone retain certain material. As I say particularly when they could be framed in some cases as the spoils of war for example
00:15:10
Speaker
Yes. Which these aren't, it has to be said. The path and the marbles are not the spores of water, but the Benin bronzes are. Yes, absolutely. There's no question about that. But the situation really is a legal one and a matter of will Boris Johnson not wanting to make a decision on this way?
00:15:36
Speaker
As the Guardian points out in its coverage, when he was involved in the Oxford Union in the 1980s, Melina Mercuri, who I mentioned earlier, the Greek Culture Minister, was invited to speak about this subject and actually won a vote at the Oxford Union among now many of whom are the great and the good of
00:15:58
Speaker
culture, that the marble should be returned. So I suspect in the long term, some kind of arrangement will be made. But I don't, I may be completely wrong in this, but there are the legal hurdles.
00:16:20
Speaker
Now the other thing that we need to factor into this is that the Board of Trustees of the British Museum have a new chair. Well I was just about to ask could it be that Johnson sees the new chair as a safe pair of hands? The new chair for people who again missed our coverage of it at the time is the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Senior Conservative Politician George Osborne.
00:16:44
Speaker
um and so there you have a politician and and and someone whose reputation is partly built on political strategy and being able to play the political game and by sexting the heritage sector in this country but that's another story yeah um look i
00:17:06
Speaker
People are placed on the board of the British Museum because they have a certain amount of expertise in various areas, not just classical archaeology. I mean, another member of the board is Mary Beard, the famous classicist. So, you know, look, who knows?
00:17:25
Speaker
The board operates within the current legal constraints, but it is perfectly within its rights to talk to its counterparts, say at the part of the museum and Athens, and come up with a mutually agreeable arrangement, which it can then put to government.
00:17:42
Speaker
and I think that's what's going on here. What they're trying to do, what Johnson was trying to do, yes, he was trying to, again, the political context, he's had a difficult couple of weeks, but he's doing his best.
00:17:59
Speaker
He's doing his best to avoid the issue. It's a niche issue for many people, but some bad headlines about holding onto stolen artwork and the Greeks protesting about it wouldn't have been a good look
00:18:18
Speaker
this week on top of everything else.
Public Opinion's Role in Museum Ethics
00:18:21
Speaker
So what he's done is, as you're talking about, well, one colleague on Twitter, when I tweeted this out, said, oh, Johnson's passing the buck there. And to a certain extent, that's true. And as I say, it is disingenuous to say that it's an issue for the trustees because there is that legal constraint which can only be fixed by the government.
00:18:43
Speaker
However though, one imagines if the trustees come to a fairly, you know, a broad consensus, if not a unanimous decision, that would put pressure on institutions to find legal ways forward. So I suppose, actually what Johnson has done there, possibly by trying to wriggle out of direct conversation and responsibility, he's actually
00:19:06
Speaker
opened up a pathway forward. And as you say, it's likely probably therefore that something will happen, presumably, presumably. That's right. Look, as I say,
00:19:18
Speaker
Compared to any other time, certainly my adult life, and I've been aware of this particular issue, there is more sympathy for the concepts of restitution, reparation, sharing of material internationally and so on. And that's certainly the case in the museum and archaeology world.
00:19:41
Speaker
I would imagine that if you took a poll among museum and archaeology people, there will probably be a majority, certainly for a loan back, if not a full restoration. So in which case, you know,
00:19:58
Speaker
This is accepting that the goal, as I said at the beginning of this conversation, the goalposts have moved. The ball is closer to the net. The Greeks have moved the ball closer to the net. I'm remembering, I think it was the 2002 euros where the
00:20:19
Speaker
Anyway, famously, in the early noughties, the Greeks won the European championship out of nowhere. Won nil after a rather dull game. But it was a huge, it was a huge moment in a huge national moment. And I think to take the football in metaphor, yeah, that's where we are now. They've moved the ball closer to the
00:20:47
Speaker
to the British Museum goal and it might get netted sooner rather than later. Okay and just as one final thing I would say about this is I imagine that something happening would be good all round if nothing else because at the moment whenever one brings up the British Museum in other capacities, for example on the RKSU Facebook page and Twitter etc,
00:21:15
Speaker
The first thing you get is a torrent of comments saying, well, give stuff back, give the stuff back, you thieves, you British thieves, this kind of thing. If we can try and put that somehow to bed, and if that means finally returning the partner marbles, hopefully we can all start to move on with these issues, and especially move into a different way of doing museum, as it were, and move away from some of these knotty issues.
00:21:44
Speaker
with learning and with genuine positive intent. Before I get flamed by our football fan viewer, I'll just point out that UEFA Euro Championship win was in 2004, not 2010. Oh, thank goodness. I'm so glad we cleared that up.
00:22:06
Speaker
But this is a serious point to end on, a very serious point to end on. At the beginning of that championship, you could have got 150 to one on Greece winning. So if you could get those sorts of odds on Return of the Path and the Marbles, I'd put a quid on it. Yeah. Interesting.
00:22:25
Speaker
So Andy has rejigged things in his office and we're no longer hopefully going to be quite so blinded by his awesomeness.
Contract Archaeology Pay Issues: A Global Resonance
00:22:36
Speaker
I have to correct you there, it was actually the marvellous ship and I've instructed it to return to Sirius.
00:22:43
Speaker
Well, you say that, but I keep on getting the sun at my window, so maybe you've sent the mothership here to blind me. Anyway, our second story of the week was inspired by a tweet that came to my attention from a US-based account. Travis on Twitter, aka the At Leftist Dad jokes,
00:23:08
Speaker
asked the question that seemingly resonated across the world. It was the tweets heard around the world. He asked quite a simple question. Why is the pay in contract archaeology so bad? How the American Cultural Resource Association, ACRA, and the US Forest Service suppressed wage increases for archaeological technicians in the 1990s,
00:23:32
Speaker
The current, the cultural resource management CRM industry was locked in a debate on whether archaeological field work was skilled or unskilled labour. And this, I mean, this is absolutely something that we've been talking about in this country in recent months and years, not least with regards to immigration policy and the ability for archaeologists to be classed as skilled labour and therefore able to get into the country to do work that they may in fact be very much required to do.
00:24:01
Speaker
But for a relatively small Twitter account, just over 200 followers, Travis's tweet was garnering a lot of traction here in the US, in Canada and other places.
00:24:17
Speaker
That's right. I mean, we won't go into the whole thread now. It's 32 tweets long. But it's a detailed resume of how, in a sense, archaeology, or at least the organizing bodies in archaeology, and the companies and their representative bodies, arguably, conspired is too strong a word, but certainly cooperated with
00:24:45
Speaker
the funders of archaeology, the commercial funders of archaeology in government and in industry to suppress wages and conditions for archaeological field workers, particularly those on the less well-paid grades.
Debate Over Fair Wages in Archaeology
00:25:03
Speaker
And as you say, it resonated with archaeologists really across the world, Australia, Canada, Europe and Britain. In Britain, we tend to call it developer funded archaeology rather than cultural resource management. But it's the same thing. It's archaeology that is done alongside or ahead of usually commercial developments or large government infrastructure projects.
00:25:33
Speaker
down on the principle that if you can't preserve in situ, you're preserved by record. Yeah, absolutely. On that front of pay in particular, SIFA, the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists,
00:25:47
Speaker
As recently as 2018, this isn't the most recent statement on these matters, and we'll come to that in a moment. In 2018, they issued a series of proclamations based on a review of paying conditions.
00:26:03
Speaker
For example, one of the specific recommendations from the trade union prospect was that the board of SIFA considered in its deliberations the Living Wage Foundation's real living wage for London. So essentially, artificially raising the legal minimum wage in order to allow people God forbid to live on the money that they're earning.
00:26:24
Speaker
But the board went on to say this. The board recognised that the market for archaeological services continues to grow and is largely back to pre-recession levels. It only took a decade, it seems, to get to there, and that parts of the UK are experiencing difficulty in recruiting sufficiently skilled archaeologists.
00:26:44
Speaker
It also acknowledged that there are significant regional variations in the market for archaeological services across the UK, as well as considerable concern and uncertainty as to the result of the Brexit vote. It considered prospect recommendations of raising the minimum wage or recommending a living London living wage at the very least.
00:27:06
Speaker
but concluded that this would constitute a policy departure for the minimum salaries, as it would require substantial increases to be phased in to archaeologists' pay packets. Based on the information above, the board concluded that the minimum salaries should increase from the 1st of April 2018 to, and well, starting at the PCEFA level, that's the basic pay grade that they outline, £18,600.
00:27:36
Speaker
But I think I think it is worth pointing out here though. The 18 grand is something like £7,000 less than the current national average. Exactly. Yeah. And this, the reason why this is important though, is that this in translation is essentially, we don't want to annoy or disappoint development and developers, the people who are paying
00:28:02
Speaker
It's not disappointing, it's annoying. We don't want to frighten developers into thinking they're going to have to pay more money for us when they already don't want to pay for us anyway. Yeah, so therefore we'll acknowledge that we've been asked to consider advocating a higher minimum wage, but actually we're going to leave that to individual employers rather than advocating on behalf of the archaeologists to pay their subs to be members of this chartered institute for archaeologists.
Qualifications vs. Pay: Is the Industry Supporting Its Workers?
00:28:28
Speaker
Now, that's interesting in the context of actual qualifications of archaeologists in the national labour market. In 2019-2020, it was apparently highly statistically likely that archaeologists would be fairly highly qualified. One percent of archaeologists in the labour market have a post-doc qualification.
00:28:54
Speaker
so that means they've done their PhD and everything else that comes before that, and they've gone on to do another qualification. 23% have employed archaeologists, and this would be archaeologists who, for example, maybe I've worked with who are simply friends of house at a museum, perhaps. I know some of these people in this instance have a PhD. Well, I'm sorry, I know we all do, but in that sense, I literally remember having conversations with people who were like, I've got a PhD, and I'm
00:29:19
Speaker
you know, working in this particular job, goodness, 44% have a Masters and 28% have a BA or BSc level qualification. So we'll include links to these stats and where we got them from below so you can scrutinise them. But what this boils down to is that within
00:29:37
Speaker
the UK, 96% of archaeologists have at least a BA or BSc level education, 96%. This compares via the Office for National Statistics to only 45% of 21 to 64 year olds in the same labour market having a BA or BSc basic education and higher. So archaeologists are
00:30:04
Speaker
almost double, in fact more than double the rate of highly qualified, therefore I would argue highly motivated, highly capable individuals and yet we are under-renumerated for the most part. It seems that the national body that we should rely on to have our back on this issue is for fear of disappointing or frustrating or annoying developers dragging their heels very much and yet
00:30:33
Speaker
I remember when SIFA, who were the IFA, when they were going for that important C, that chartered status, trying to make the case that this would just be very important for the profession and put us on the same footing as lawyers and this kind of thing. Does SIFA have our back when it comes to paying conditions?
00:30:57
Speaker
I think we need to be careful here. We mustn't lay all the blame at the feet of SIFA. There's another organization called FAME, the Federation of Archaeological Managers and Employers, which is also very significant in this area. It does what it says on the tin. It represents the interest
00:31:16
Speaker
of archaeological managers, the big companies like Oxford Archaeology and Museum of London Archaeology and the others were fixed and the others. And they have a huge amount of power on this because they literally hold the purse strings. They're also the ones who put in the tenders and could if they wanted to
00:31:36
Speaker
increase their prices. Thing is, because everything is done competitive tender, if one company puts up its prices to pay its staff better, guess who's not going to get the gig if the others don't follow suit. At the same time, there are legal restrictions on, for example, operating as what's called a cartel, so making prices across an industry. That's illegal. It's not simple.
00:32:03
Speaker
But on the other hand, the archaeological workforce could, if it wanted to take the initiative and, for example, take industrial action for higher pay. And the mechanism for doing that, I just made this point quickly.
00:32:28
Speaker
That can be done independently of SIFA and of FAME and all of the other bodies that are involved. If the archaeological staff could speak in terms of one, but it's not a heavily unionized sector, the main union at the moment, the highest profile union recruiting among archaeologists is Prospect.
00:32:58
Speaker
but at the moment I think they claim something like just over a thousand members, which is something like a sixth, probably, of the Active Archaeological Workforce. Yes, yeah. I should be clear, I'm not suggesting that SIFA unilaterally
00:33:17
Speaker
alters the market but rather SIFA can make, could make statements as they do on what they believe should be the adequate remuneration for professionals who are in this instance members of their body. Their most recent statement from April 2021 raised the lowest level of pay to £20,400 so that's a modest increase over the course of two years.
00:33:43
Speaker
But it's still well below the national average. Now if we compare this to an electrician on a UK building site, someone who is ubiquitous across the sector, who absolutely archaeologists will be bumping into and seeing in and around site,
00:34:04
Speaker
Electricians' day rates at the moment average around £250. I've put a link below to the website how much electrician rates for 2021, and they range from maybe £200 up to 272. That's the difference between Angus and Aberdeen there. So we've averaged that out at around £250 a day.
00:34:30
Speaker
For an annual rate, that comes out at £65,000.
00:34:41
Speaker
I mean, there is an issue here whereby if an electrician gets it wrong, people die. You know, if someone touches a live wire when they shouldn't or if a circuit is improperly installed, it could cause a fire, it could cause a heart attack, it could, you know, there's a reason why electricians are paid well. But the difference between 65 and two years ago, 18 and now just over 20,000 pounds of archaeologists is stark.
00:35:08
Speaker
And I suppose just going to the heart of this question, where should we be looking for guidance and leadership on this? And in fact, are industry leaders within the heritage sector in this instance in the UK actually willing to make the case for archaeology being worthwhile paying for? It feels a little bit as though
00:35:36
Speaker
Archaeologists run the risk of sounding whiny when actually what they need is to have a fairly reasonable conversation and argument adequately supported by people who can actually make waves, for example, in Westminster.
00:35:52
Speaker
There was a very interesting debate within SIFA itself a couple of years ago when the management of SIFA tried to add on top of the existing three grades, fourth grade for called chartered archaeologist, taking out the fact that they were now allowed to call people chartered archaeologists legally.
00:36:17
Speaker
permission to do the permission from government and uh you know the majesty to to do that um it went to a vote and the management lost they couldn't get the they couldn't get the required majority to get that adopted it's really interesting if you look at the breakdown of statistics um that were published by um c4 after the extraordinary general meeting in 2019 that discussed this um
00:36:45
Speaker
If you look at the pie chart of people who voted for the proposal, by far the biggest proportion voted because it would enhance parity with other professions and would enhance the external perception of archaeology garnering higher respect and status.
00:37:10
Speaker
And also the next category of support was people who believed that it would support future developments and improvement of the status of archaeologists. Now, conversely, and this was the winning argument, if you like, by far the most people who opposed that proposal
00:37:34
Speaker
felt that it would make archaeology look exclusive, elitist, it would be alienating and would enhance pay disparity within the workforce. In other words, the people who achieved chartered status could fly off onto the 65 brand.
00:37:53
Speaker
and leaving the rest, your jobbing digger at the trench face on their starting pay of 19.
Cultural Acceptance of Low Pay in Archaeology
00:38:05
Speaker
So again, it's not an easy question to answer. I think I'll finish. And again, it's a debate, and the debate really is about
00:38:19
Speaker
Who represents archaeologists? Who puts the arguments? Are the arguments even put? My final thing on this would be just to say, because often the people who we rely on to make these arguments are in fairly well paid positions. They're in the positions that are very high up that pay scale.
00:38:43
Speaker
And they seemingly are vulnerable to entering a culture where they feel as though change at the bottom is simply too difficult to make. Turning the ship around will upset the apple cart, for example, for development archaeology, or for the perception of unity within the sector. And yet, below that sort of level, there is a great deal of unity behind the simple fact that
00:39:12
Speaker
And it's quite tragic, actually, that within archaeology, it's almost a joke. It's almost, you know, people sort of say, oh, obviously, I didn't get into this for the money, or, you know, for the ability to have a... I mean, in the summer, we were on location, and the archaeologist said to me, since when have archaeologists expected to be able to have a family?
00:39:37
Speaker
this person said that to me. And they were not joking. They were, in that instance, they were being deadly serious. So there's a risk that people, unfortunately, are inculcated into this culture of being unfairly paid and higher up the spectrum when people become increasingly comfortable. They don't want to be a loose cannon that rocks the boat, as it were.
00:40:03
Speaker
Anyway, that's my piece. Go ahead. I'd just like to finish really with some more figures. These have been quoted by an archaeologist called Nebsondas who's involved in things like the Diggers Forum.
00:40:24
Speaker
in June, in fact, on Badger, his archaeological jobs resource on the forum. He did an analysis of particularly the lower, paying the lower two grades, so starting with the practitioner.
00:40:44
Speaker
And he noted a couple of things and again, we will link to the, to the piece but a couple of things struck me really quite strongly out of it.
00:40:58
Speaker
he said that quite a few employers take what he called the lazy option of basically adopting the C for minimum and saying that's our minimum. Yeah. Period. Yeah. You know, so, and so although the C for minimum is arranged for the PCIFA grade, they adopt the lower end of the grades and say that's the job done.
00:41:19
Speaker
And just to briefly add to that as well, that often presumably will be done without scrutiny as to the ruling of the minimum. So as we talked about in the 2018 document, when they're talking about how, oh yes, we've been asked to consider having this London minimum wage, but we're not going to, this is the number we're putting out.
00:41:39
Speaker
Presumably, if people are setting their standards based on that number, they may not look into what went into that reckoning. They may just simply adopt the number that's been put out. I think it's worthwhile just reflecting on that. Go ahead.
00:41:54
Speaker
Absolutely. The other interesting thing that Saunders figures throw up is that the higher up the grades you go, it would appear that there is a difference between unionized workforces and
00:42:11
Speaker
non-unionized workforces where the unionized workforces are paid more across all the grades but the disparity at the bottom end is around about £100. Well up at a higher rate is as much as £645 between unionized and non-unionized. The suggestion there being, you know, I'm not saying this but you know people might want to consider going out and joining a union and then negotiating collectively with their
Union Influence on Archaeological Pay
00:42:40
Speaker
with their employer, because it does appear that unionised archaeologists do get paid more than non-unionised archaeologists. But again, the thing that comes off the figures is just the
00:43:01
Speaker
the disparity, there's no consistency. For example, again, at supervisors, some are as low as 21-300, which is interesting given that the lowest possible rate
00:43:21
Speaker
As of 2021, seemingly, is $20,000, was it $400,000? Yeah. Just over $20,000. So that's about a thousand difference between the lowest paid and a supervisor. That's right. But whoop-de-do, at the top end, somebody actually breaks the barrier for the national average and could get as much as $28,498.
00:43:44
Speaker
you know, so that's it. That's a huge difference. That's 7,000 pounds difference. Yeah. Yeah. Not doing the same job. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, so yeah, it's it. Look, I think short, short answer. It's a mess. And it is probably if the profession is going to remain healthy, it's a mess that's going to have to be cleared up somehow or other.
00:44:14
Speaker
Otherwise, you're going to have, you know, problems. I mean, there are already not enough archaeologists in the UK. It's been made a shortage profession by the in terms of bringing archaeologists in from outside. I'm a colleague of ours.
00:44:29
Speaker
reached a booth, it's just moved from Australia to begin work with an English contracting company. Right. So, you know, it's that, that's how it is. But you've got a, it's almost a perfect storm of an insecure
00:44:49
Speaker
profession insecure in terms of the job security and paying conditions and so on, which is under resourced, understaffed. And you read the forums and you read the response to that Twitter feed that we started with. People are or morale is
00:45:16
Speaker
it's like not all that it should be. No. And as you said as well, and the tragedy of it is, as you said, is that looking at the qualifications, people have had the reasons people go into archaeology. People do go into archaeology as a vocation. And it is a highly qualified profession. And look at the success of programs like time team and so on. It has a lot of public recognition and people enjoy
00:45:44
Speaker
what we do. So leading therefore, maybe slightly trailing what we might be talking about next week, I suppose a question to consider here is the one that I keep on poking at and that is
00:46:02
Speaker
Who are we trusting to make these cases and to examine the health and viability, for example, of academic archaeology that feeds into this 96% qualification rate that seemingly is required to be an archaeologist in this country?
00:46:21
Speaker
Who do we rely on? Can we rely on them? And I suppose more broadly speaking what are and should be our expectations and our options. I don't want to say anything else about that because I think there are some things that are still being finalised for next week's show but it's
00:46:40
Speaker
it's going to be interesting to see the response. And hopefully by discussing this this week, we've at the very least laid out the fact that we genuinely care, as we talked about in a previous Watching Beast not that long ago, about the quality of the profession and quality, that is to say, the experience of being an archaeologist. I'm not talking about necessarily exclusive quality gatekeeping. It's much more a case of what's it like to be an archaeologist and who supports us? And are the people who
00:47:10
Speaker
who claim to have a status of high support actually doing as good a job as they could or should be doing. I'll stop there. I won't keep on talking. Is there anything you want to say about next week's Watching Brief Handy?
00:47:30
Speaker
Um, no, only that look, I mean, when, when I tweeted this out the other day, and it did, it's had a lot of traction. But the
00:47:47
Speaker
Look, what I said was, archaeology is done by people who deserve to own a proper living, except on both sides of the Atlantic, too many don't. And I think we have to ask why that is. And it's not enough just to ask why we then have to say, what can we do about it? Yeah, yeah. From your lips to the mothership.
00:48:09
Speaker
So as ever, Andy, thank you for your time this week. Thank you guys for watching at home. Please do comment below and look forward to that watching brief special that's coming next week. We hope to have some contributors as well, other people commenting, so it should be interesting. And until next time, do take care, everyone. Bye-bye.
00:48:35
Speaker
This podcast episode has been produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network in collaboration with Archaeosoup Productions. Find out more podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
00:48:51
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.