Current Archaeology Live 2015
I wonder whether Dr Bland could answer the question, how, when it is not so regarded in any other country on the planet, encouraging (partnership with) Collection-Driven Exploitation of the archaeological record is any form of "rescuing the past"? How can it be? In Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Arizona, Peshwar, the Jos Plateau, Thessalonika, Calabria, Tunesia and many, many other places it is not, but on one magical little green western island off the coast of Europe it "is"? Or is that just a myth?
If the PAS is recording only a small and not necessarily even representative proportion of what is hoiked (which the PAS now admit) it is not "rescuing the past" but recording just a bit of the destroyed past. That is no substitute for failing to manage the rest, the majority of the erosion caused by Collection-Driven Exploitation.
The PAS only addresses one aspect of the problem with CDE and is not a long term solution to the problem. How does Dr Bland envisage the "rescuing of the Past" from the effects of CDE looking in two decades time? What does he see the value of the individual records being made now to the archaeology of the country in twenty years from now, and to our knowledge of the sites these objects came from? Or is he not considering the long-term perspective?
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