PAS outreach officer: qualities needed..... Once upon a time they claimed to be British archaeologists biggest archaeological outreach project. No more:
"an interest in British archaeology would be advantageous".What? They are seriously going to consider employing as outreach officers people who have no interest in archaeology at all if nobody else comes along? So who? Classicists? Mole catchers? Unfrocked catechists? Bus drivers and freemasons? No, the word missing here is "vitally essential". How on earth is anyone going to spread enthusiasm for best practice in an audience in a field for which they have no interest in at all? That's public money thrown in the mud isn't it? But there is more you
"will be sensitive to the needs of local communities".What does that mean? Is not what is actually being conveyed is that you will suck up to a certain sort of person, nationally, but they don't dare say what distinguishes them. But as long as you are not really interested in what happens to the archaeological record at the hands of these folk, it's worth £28,460 per annum to turn a blind eye.
Ys, PAS has never, ever been "sensitive to the needs of local communities". Let them define them if I'm wrong. There are two main communities involved in what they are mainly concerned with:
ReplyDeletea national community of highly mobile detectorists to whose "needs" they have been exraordinarily sensitive
and an obviously local, immobile community of landowners whose needs they have entirely ignored.
If they really employed someone sensitive to the needs of local communities it would be someone who strongly advised farmers to get an independent valuation of finds so as to avoid being swindled, would it not?