Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK

Making History, on BBC Radio 4, had an article yesterday on the plight of commercial archaeology in UK during the recession. It made for some sobering listening.

To understand what all the fuss is about, you need to get over the idea that archaeologists are all volunteers, either school kids or retired, or perhaps have a nice research job in a University. Some are, and some do, but there’s a whole bunch of others who are trying to make a living from archaeology, in the same way that they would with any other job.

So, the Institute for Archaeologists, the professional body for archaeologists in the UK, have been profiling the profession since 2002, looking at the number of practising archaeologists, the average wage, etc. In 2007, at the peak of the housing boom, there were 7000 practising archaeologists, of which approx 4000 were working in commercial archaeology, with the rest working in academia or part of the planning team in councils. Since then, nearly 700 jobs have been lost, equating to 10% of that all-time high, and it’s fair to say that there will have been more losses in the commercial sector than in academia or councils. On the radio show yesterday they were suggesting up to 1 in 5 commercial archaeologists but I can’t find any figures to back that up.

The reason for this downturn is that commercial archaeology is now tied so tightly into the planning regime in the UK, and is funded almost entirely by developers, so if there is no building work going on, then there is no archaeology being done…

Hopefully things will start picking up as the government try and inject stimulus money into infrastructure, but it’s going to be a difficult year for everyone.

Via the Guardian’s Free Our Data Blog, but with remarkably little fanfare elsewhere- the UK Government have released their new strategy for the Ordnance Survey. The results have the potential to be really good, but might also be a bit of a damp squib. The big concession is an extended OS OpenSpace service:

It will provide greater access to free use of a number of Ordnance Survey products from 1:10,000 scale through to 1:1 million scale. It will also include official boundaries information.

This is good news, though not as forward thinking as I’d like, unless the terms and conditions for the use of Open Space change dramatically. In my dreams, they are going to release their mapping via WMS- after all it would save them having to ship out all those update cds every year…

The new pricing strucure for full data access will be out in October, apparently. I’m not holding my breath for any nice friendly educational-charity fee structures though, since the whole document seems to assume you’re either an individual (read hobbyist) or a commercial company, and the trouble with educational charities is that we don’t really fit into a sensible box like that.

What’s nice though, is that the whole document is available online as a commentable document. Not sure how much notice will be taken of feedback, but it’s a start!

This week British Telecom ate our SDSL line, meaning we’ve been without phones, email or internet for 2.5 days. Thank goodness for Broadband dongles, though part of me feels uneasy at how impossible it was to do much work without being able to quickly check things on the internet or consult with colleagues.

In the mean time though, there have been another set of interesting posts on my current topics of interest soap-boxes, namely file formats and the openness thereof, and open source business models. Most of them are from Mr Ramsey, but my boss makes a very good point here in response to the argument “who do I sue if things go wrong”? (Answer- no one, check that license before you click on “accept”). Really, if we want to make a change we have to keep banging away at these two issues.

Have a nice Easter everyone, and don’t eat too much chocolate…