Reply to Roger Thomas

Abstract

I am grateful to Roger Thomas for his comments, which provide the basis for a most interesting discussion about 'preventive' [rescue] archaeology. I would like to reply to several points which he raised in connection with the French system. The new French system, in the spirit of the Valetta Convention ratified by France in 1994, in effect provides the developer with a financial incentive to modify his plans. In practice, the levy payable is calculated in proportion to the thickness of archaeological levels and the density of remains within them. In this new system, archaeology is closely involved in the planning process. The subordinate legislation flowing from the 2001 statute obliges most development projects to be submitted to the regional archaeological services of the Ministry of Culture. Correspondingly, these archaeological services, together with the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), must return an opinion or a decision to intervene within a limited period specified by the legislation. More generally, the effect of this system is a globalised pooling of financial resources at the national level, which makes it possible to organise, to draw up research programmes and to set up a scientific agenda at the national level. Finally, the statute does not confer any total monopoly upon INRAP, but obliges it to collaborate with other scientific institutions. In this connection, one must distinguish commercial competition, which is driven by the motive of financial gain, from scientific competition driven by the will to produce fresh knowledge. These two forms of competition are not only distinct but can be mutually exclusive. Roger Thomas is right to conclude his comments by praising the slogan 'Vive la difference!' It is possible to imagine that in a country like the United Kingdom, where both the market economy (since Adam Smith) and archaeology are venerable traditions, a system of commercial archaeology is workable because of the strict scientific selfregulation of the archaeological profession itself. However, that is not necessarily the case elsewhere. Commercial archaeology in the United States, for instance, is the target of numerous criticisms, above all from American archaeologists themselves. It is not hard to imagine countries, including European ones, where the first priority of developers is not the scientific quality of excavations but how cheaply they can be conducted, and where the main preoccupation of commercial archaeology outfits is not the reinvestment of gains into scientific projects. In a commercial system, a developer is not purchasing archaeological knowledge; he is purchasing the 'clearance' of his property in the most favourable economic conditions possible. Everybody should be happy to hear that in the United Kingdom a commercial system is also leading to an improvement in excavation standards and publication. But that is not an automatic consequence. So, like Roger Thomas, I too am appealing for the right to be different. It would be the worst of outcomes if the European Union were to impose on archaeologists a single model narrowly imitated from the sort of models driven exclusively by the logic of commercial competition, like those which dominate, for example, the construction of roads or buildings.