Do You want Archaeofries with that Airborne Pork?

Samarkeolog has a depressing post on his blog: "Free archaeology: austerity Britain – museum workers and entire workforces are replaced with volunteers"  (May 27, 2013). He suggests that the way things are going, in Britain's so-called Big Society, “volunteering” is being used to enable the savaging of the UK cultural heritage sector, and that workfare will be used to double down on this unemployment and precarisation of the cultural heritage profession. He refers to the efforts of Rescue (the British Archaeological Trust) to map the effects of the cuts, and Doug Rocks-Macqueen’s posts on "Archaeology as a McJob", the split between academic and commercial archaeologists’ interests, and the loss of 30% of jobs in the crisis. Worth reading and thinking where the "partnering" of artefact hunters fits in with all this.