Time for a last quick one?

Time for a last quick one? No put-down, this; rather an expression of how intriguing it is toobserve the process by which the times through which one has lived aretransmuted into acceptable history. It is good that so influential acontemporary as Geoffrey Wainwright Geoffrey Wainwright is a British Methodist theologian.Born in Yorkshire, England, in 1939, Geoffrey Wainwright is an ordained minister of the British Methodist Church. He received his university education in Cambridge, Geneva, and Rome, and holds the Dr. Th¨¦ol. (2000) has turned to autobiographyas, like myself, he drains his glass; for, whatever future historiansmay judge, it appears to us who have been involved with Britisharchaeology virtually throughout the second half of the 20th centurythat it was a significant period for our subject in this place, notleast because of the very considerable achievement of our autobiographerin his official role. It would be unfortunate, however, were Wainwright's narrativeaccepted as the, or even a, definitive history about British archaeology1960-2000. I am not at all content, for example and obviously, with hisdismissal of the post-1960s role of the Royal Commission on HistoricalMonuments (England), but his prejudice and my subjectivity can awaitdiscussion elsewhere. He omits some key events, for example thedigging-out of the MPs' car park at Westminster which with almostunbelievable ineptitude IneptitudeSee also Awkwardness.Brown, Charliemeek hero unable to kick a football, fly a kite, or win a baseball game. [Comics: “Peanuts” in Horn, 543]Capt. Queegincompetent commander of the minesweeper Caine. handed Rescue protagonists a golden opportunityto have the dire archaeological situation in the country discussed inParliament in a blaze on fire; burning with a flame; filled with, giving, or reflectin g light; excited or exasperated.See also: Blaze of unprompted -- of course -- national mediaattention. So authentic are Wainwright's memories, however, andsuch his authority as pragmatist, scholar and first-hand witness, thathis view of the later 20th-century could become standard archaeologicalhistory; yet we should mark his own insistence that he cannot possiblybe objective, that his substantial paper is but a personal perspective,and that he relies on memory, not research (which is clearly notabsolutely true). I therefore enter three mild caveats. Academia, specifically universities, hardly appears in hisoverview. Perhaps he genuinely scorns it, perhaps genuinely thinksuniversities were of little significance in British archaeology duringhis career. Either way this is a pity, because the story of universitiesand archaeology over those 50 or so years is of interest in itself, andit is a story yet to be told even if it did not impinge much on theyoung impresario in the fie ld or on the increasingly machiavellian, greyeminence indoors. Yet, university academics as well as theirinstitutions saw their role in archaeology change radically in thoseyears, not least in relation to central government archaeology.Wainwright mentions universities only in passing, however, and only asteaching places (the exception is the network of university-basedlaboratories developed for archaeological science Archaeological science (also known as Archaeometry) is the application of scientific techniques and methodologies to archaeology.Archaeological science can be divided into the following areas: ). More significantly,he misses completely a subtle but profound shift, though his own text issilent witness to the point: as university provision in archaeologyincreased, with more and more archaeological staff in post, so theacademic world contributed less and less to the formulation of officialpolicy, to the guidance of state-provision in British archaeology. Upuntil t he '70s, it was assumed that academics were in generalextremely knowledgeable about their subject (in a way that CivilServants could not be) and were therefore somehow able and willing togive impartial advice to government; and they, for their part,recognising their privileged position in the public sector, gave oftheir time and judgements, freely and with the approval of theiremployers. The high point of this state of affairs in Englisharchaeology was during the proliferation of committees in the 1970s.Wainwright's description fails to mention that most of the officialones were dominated by academics trying to help the new DoE enter thenew world of public archaeology within an academic framework. Thatheyday came and went. Though university-based archaeologists continuedto help what was soon to become English Heritage English Heritage is a non-departmental public body of the United Kingdom government (Department for Culture, Media and Sport) with a broad remit of managing th e historic environment of England. It was set up under the terms of the National Heritage Act 1983. , their role in generalchanged to that of paid consultant, hired to do a specific job in aspecific time rather than be the dispenser of altruistic (though notnecessarily correct) advice. This role was welcomed by their employerswho were now in a competitive situation counting pence, students andstatus. Meanwhile, come money where it may, university archaeologists werepursuing research both outside DoE funding and the UK, while museums andthe volunteer sector were also involved in research. Though nothing cangain-say the quantum leap quantum leapn.An abrupt change or step, especially in method, information, or knowledge: "War was going to take a quantum leap; it would never be the same"Garry Wills. in the amount of field activity funded andinduced by DoE/EH in the last two decades of the century,Wainwright's view, as he implies, is partial, and we need toremember that the Mini stry/DoE/EH neither were nor are the centre ofeverything. A huge question remains even of that smaller, EH-focussedworld, which has, after all, undertaken and promoted this leap tothousands of interventions per year in the name of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) An integrated information system that is used to plan, schedule and control the presales and postsales activities in an organization. , itself based onan assumption about the academic, scientific value of archaeologicalresources. Planning control apart, is the academic gain on a par withthe effort and the cost? Does anyone know? After trying to write a bigbook of synthesis myself, I can only remark anecdotally that it isfrustrating in the extreme to know that lots of relevant information hasbeen gained but in a very real sense is not available. I would guess mybook has been able to take into account less than 5% of that informationgained in the last 20 years. Another significant omission, adult education or, morespecifically, university Departments of Extra-Mural Studies, may alsonot have much affected Wainwright directly; but it was historicallysignificant in the context of his narrative. He remarks on the absenceof any recognition of public interest in archaeology in the 1943 `Futureof Archaeology' conference (though the Council for BritishArchaeology The Council for British Archaeology is a British organisation based in York that promotes archaeology within the United Kingdom. Since 1944 the Council has been involved in publicising and generating public support for British archaeology; formulating and disseminating was conceived there) and in his hero O'Neil'smemorandum of 1952; yet in the 1960s archaeology overtook economics asthe most popular subject in what were them almost exclusively eveningclasses and weekend `schools'. It was this awareness of publicinterest, and of its likely support for a `Save our Past'-typecampaign, that encouraged some of us -- Barker and Webster atBirmingham, for example, and Rowley at Oxford -- to start `goingpublic' on the amount of archaeological destruction that washappening and the, to us, near-total inability of the national provisionto cope with it. The M5 Committee to which Wainwright so kindly referswas not a brave and noble venture: it was a desperate, last-minute throwof the dice born, at least on my part, out of deep anger at thearchaeological waste and sheer, incompetent inadequacy of bureaucratic bu¡¤reau¡¤crat?n.1. An official of a bureaucracy.2. An official who is rigidly devoted to the details of administrative procedure.bu archaeology. That there was any volunteer response at all was onlypossible because of the existence of local societies and 10 years andmore of Extra-Mural archaeological provision in the Bristol region; andthe same applied later elsewhere, on the M4 and the M40 for example. But the Extra-Mural dimension went further, in a way whichregulated, modern practitioners and students i n the field of adulteducation may find extraordinary: archaeological tutors shared thoughts,acted in understanding and used our almost unfettered discretion toarrange all sorts of occasions, from major conferences to small trainingevents, for the betterment of archaeology and its public understanding.That Extra-Mural connection was crucial. It provided us with a directlink with the skilled, the committed and the concerned in a way which nopolitician or civil servant from `Miniworks' could possiblyappreciate. We knew exactly what we were doing in launching whatWainwright happily calls `The Rescue crusade'; and, remembering thehostility with which we were confronted by then senior officials, it wasgood to hear him say, 30 years later, `Thank God for Rescue'(Wainwright 1999, the published version of his Millennial Lecture to thePrehistoric Society on 27 October, 1999, omits this statement). My principal difficulty with Wainwright's narrative is the wayin which it consistently portrays his employer, be it the Ministry ofWorks The Ministry of Works was a department of the UK Government formed in 1943, during World War II, to organise the requisitioning of property for wartime use. After the war, the Ministry retained responsibility for Government building projects. , the Department of the Environment or English Heritage, aspositive, wise and right. That may have been so in some existentialcorridor of power but I can only say, as an historical fact, that thatis not how it appeared to outsiders from the late '50s into the1980s (my much decreased involvement with central government archaeologysince then inhibits comment over the last 15 years). Despite the effortsof individual officers to work the Civil Service ethos and bureaucracyto archaeological ends, `the Ministry' almost invariably in¡¤var¡¤i¡¤a¡¤ble?adj.Not changing or subject to change; constant.in¡¤vari¡¤a¡¤bil came overas out of touch, defensive, inadequate and reactionary. Many of theideas and initiatives listed by Wainwright, at least until he himselfbecame a powerful internal motor of change in the '80s, came fromoutside and almost invariably seemed to be only reluctantly accepted. Iknew we were getting somewhere, however, when, on one of several visitsto Ministers, a Personal Private Secretary greeted us as `the people whoare causing me more work than everything else put together'. Wainwright castigates those of us who wrote Archaeology andGovernment (1974) as being authors of `the last illogical surge of therescue crusade'; presumably pre¡¤sum¡¤a¡¤ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. because, from within, he could not seethat at the time it was utterly logical to propose an executivestructure `complementary to but distinct from' the DoEInspectorate. The logic lay precisely in the continuing inadequacy ofwhat the Inspectorate (not all individual Inspectors) seemed able to do,and its continuing appearance of being unable to bring about significantchange from within. Further, following Walsh, Barford, Rescue, and thehumiliating hu¡¤mil¡¤i¡¤ate?tr.v. hu¡¤mil¡¤i¡¤at¡¤ed, hu¡¤mil¡¤i¡¤at¡¤ing, hu¡¤mil¡¤i¡¤atesTo lower the pride, dignity, or self-respect of. See Synonyms at degrade. political retreat at the first whiff of grapeshot grape¡¤shot?n.A cluster of small iron balls formerly used as a cannon charge.[From its resemblance to a cluster of grapes. overregional archaeological units (how many of us still have lettersoffering us Directorships of such?), in despair it seemed that thebetter bet -- for the field situation remained serious -- was to attemptto by-pass the Department and put effort into bringing about politicalaction to create a new organization specific to the real situation.English Heritage was not quite what we had in mind, but 10 years later,there it was, and now it is regional. But a fundamental differencebetween Wainwright and myself is that his narrative quietly butinsistently parades a smoothed-out history of goodwill, deliberation andfar-sightedness whereas, on both the particular and in general, I ammuch more inclined to remember on the one hand and look for on theother, unpreparedness, confrontation and even conflict as triggers ofaction and change. Nevertheless, some events were, to an extent, serendipitous ser¡¤en¡¤dip¡¤i¡¤ty?n. pl. ser¡¤en¡¤dip¡¤i¡¤ties1. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.2. The fact or occurrence of such discoveries.3. An instance of making such a discovery. .Wainwright is kind but wrong in placing on me the sole responsibilityfor bringing archaeological resource management back from the USA in1975 after drinking deep in Dallas of the teachings of Bill`Conservation ethic' Lipe and Bob McGimsey, author of the originalPublic Archaeology (1972). The then Chief Inspector This article or section deals primarily with the United Kingdom and does not represent a w orldwide view of the subject.Please [ improve this article] or discuss the issue on the talk page. of Ancient Monumentswas there too. Andrew Saunders, who knows I tell this story, pronounced`Nothing new in this -- it's what we've been doing for 100years'. If so, maybe Wainwright's narrative, even if nearer asort of historical correctness than I am allowing, may be tellingposterity only how PPG PPG Points Per Game (basketball player statistic)PPG Power Play Goals (hockey)PPG Planning Policy Guidance (UK)PPG Programmable Pulse GeneratorPPG Power Puff Girls was stitched up the borders of an already-oldheritage canvas. Either way, historical truth, like the last quick one,is sometimes difficult to put down. Reference WAINWRIGHT, G.J. 1999. Honor the past and imagine the future,Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 65: 447-55. PETER FOWLER, 11 Amwell Street, London EC1R 1UL, England.