A second post on Peter Tompa's blog (see post above) accuses archaeological "purists" (sc. some of what he calls "archaeobloggers") of "Sour Grapes". He criticises the discipline's alleged "tendency to create and disseminate knowledge largely to and for only their own peers" (not like numismatists then?) which "will not serve them or their discipline well in lean economic times". If one follows back the links it will be seen that the springboard for his comments is a short text I wrote and a parallel one by David Gill referring to an Antiquity editorial by Professsor Martin Carver. I'll give again the link in longhand here to its online incarnation in case anyone missed it: http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/Ant/084/0933/ant0840933.pdf.
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It seems to me that Peter Tompa, for one, did not read (or at least understand) it before joining the debate (I use the term loosely here) about it. If he had, he would have perceived that the text was about what sort of archaeology we should be giving the public "in lean economic times".Vignette: C. Adolph Moores.
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By the way, note the confusion in the comments to that post between artefact collectors ("metal detectorists") and real amateur archaeologists.
That's like calling Osprey egg collectors ("nesters") amateur ornithologists, or costume Barbie doll collectors amateur ethnologists.
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