Editorial

Abstract

Future historians, pondering changes in British society from the 1980s onwards, will struggle to account for the following curious fact. Although British business enterprises have an extremely mixed record (frequently posting gigantic losses, mostly failing to match overseas competitors, scarcely benefitting the weaker groups in society), and although such arm’s length public institutions as museums and galleries, the BBC and the universities have by and large a very good record (universally acknowledged creativity, streets ahead of most of their international peers, positive forces for human development and social cohesion), nonetheless, over the past three decades politicians have repeatedly attempted to force the second set of institutions to change so that they more closely resemble the first. (: 12)

In a previous editorial (12.1) we spoke at length of the issues facing the archaeology and heritage sector in the UK and across much of Western Europe, particularly emphasizing the increasing commercial activities that now supplement, or in many cases replace, local or central government funding. Such changes, while exacerbated by the recent global economic downturn, have a long lineage, and moves to quantify and commercialize cultural assets, particularly in the UK, have been evident since the 1980s as successive governments have sought various ways of both paying for culture, and making culture pay (see, for example, Casey, et al., 1996; Myerscough, 1988; NAO, 2004).

The present UK government claims that its hand has been forced by the economic crisis, yet it has continued to exploit the benefits of the country’s archaeology and heritage assets (particularly in economic terms), while providing less and less support in return. While budget cuts in such a severe recession were inevitable, the government’s wider philosophical approach is telling. Its flagship project for the sector has been to promote American-style philanthropy with then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt, launching a ‘Year of Corporate Giving’ in 2011. Unfortunately, philanthropic donations fell by 11 per cent by the end of the same year (Financial Times, 2012). More recently there has been the proposed pseudo-privatizatio­n of English Heritage, reported on in the last issue, which signals a radical change in the nature of government’s relationship with the protection and management of archaeological and heritage resources in England (see Cash, 2013). Similar erosion of institutional support can be felt at the local level. As national government has increasing devolved responsibility for budget cuts, local government, facing inconceivably large black holes in their budget sheets, have inevitably withdrawn funding for anything that does not pay in economic terms. This has proved disastrous for local archaeology field units, as the recent closure of such units in Southampton and Exeter exemplifies (BBC, 2012).

Yet, outwardly some parts of the sector may appear to be thriving at the moment. Many organizations are, by and large, adapting to a new economic reality and, where possible, turning to new sources of income and support. The contribution of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to the sector continues to grow and now stands at £375m per annum, making it one of the largest, if not the largest, dedicated funder of the historic environment the UK (HLF, 2013a). It is true that many non-UK colleagues look with envy at this largess that is not available in other parts of the world. But while such support makes a significant difference to the feasibility and ultimate quality of specific projects, such funding is supplementary to core income; the base income that keeps the lights on and allows organizations to run in the first place.

In this context, then, it is of particular concern that the erosion of institutional support for archaeology and heritage in the public sector is increasingly being mirrored in UK universities.

Just as the archaeology and heritage sector has become increasingly subject to commercial imperatives, a congruent commercial shift has been taking place in much of the higher education sector. In the UK, for example, since the 1980s, the introduction of private sector management techniques, it has been claimed, has reconfigured the culture of universities by ‘embedding the growing pre-occupation with productivity into routine practices’ (Cribb & Gewirtz, 2012: 340). With the introduction of ‘Research Assessment Exercises’, such management practices extended to academics, whereby academic production has been increasingly commodified as “[…] preoccupation with research rankings has come to dominate academic life, from appointments, promotions and choice of research topics […]” (Collini, 2013: 12).

Higher education reform has recently turned its attention to a more fundamental question: who pays? Chronic underfunding of the higher education sector by successive UK governments¹ has provided the current administration an opportunity to question the sustainability of its current funding model, whereby government heavily subsidizes places on university courses. In 2010, an independent review (the ‘Browne report’) was commissioned to consider the future of university funding and student financing. Its conclusions have fundamentally shifted the relationship between state, university, and student. A basic summary of its recommendations can be found in the following sentence:

higher contributions from those that can afford to make them, and removing the blanket subsidy for all courses — without losing vital public investment in priority course. (Browne report, 2010: 8)

Here, ‘higher contributions’ means that the cap on how much universities could charge students for tuition per annum was trebled to £9000,² resulting in the average student debt for an undergraduate degree (including tuition and cost of living) of around £60,000. ‘Removing blanket subsidy’ means withdrawing government funding for subjects deemed non-essential (read humanities, social science, etc.). Conversely, ‘priority’ courses refer to subjects the government deems to be ‘useful’ (such as medicine). The result of this exercise has been a reduction of the economic contribution of government funding for the higher education system, while the financial burden for funding university places landed squarely on the seventeen-year-old shoulders of those students interested in pursuing them. Effectively, the sector has been subjected to a transition that has seen it weaned off central Government support and transformed into what Cribb and Gerwitz (2012: 342) have described as a ‘heavily marketized system’.

The implications for subjects like archaeology, which in UK universities has been steadily expanding in popularity in recent years, are profound. The main consequences of the removal of ‘blanket government funding’ is that the money in higher education now follows the student, and the economic health of archaeology departments is increasingly dependent on student choice. It is now up to universities and their relevant departments to demonstrate why an education in a particular subject is worth a £9000 investment. In this context, finances are expected to play a much more significant role in degree choice as students balance the cost of a degree against the projected earnings of their likely post-degree careers. For prospective students considering archaeology as a degree option, the prospect of £60,000 of debt to pursue a career in which typical starting salaries are often notoriously low,³ will undoubtedly be a deterrent to some and a barrier to others. Indeed, the first year of the introduction of the new higher fees has seen a 17 per cent drop in overall UK undergraduate admissions (BBC, 2014).

The consequence of this new system is likely to have a cyclical effect in terms of funding — fewer students produce less revenue for departments, less revenue limits activities (research, outreach, etc.), making them less desirable to new students. Ultimately, as universities become increasingly fiscally orientated, the viability of particular departments as stand-alone units may increasingly be called into question, bringing the possibility of amalgamation with other disciplines, or ultimately their full closure. An example of such action is the recent closure of the renowned Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity (IAA) at the University of Birmingham. Despite the reputation of the department and its role in a series of important excavations, including the Staffordshire Hoard, the Institute was amalgamated as a component of a newly formed Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology department, with the loss of eight jobs (Birmingham Mail, 2012).

Earlier this year, Professor Michael Braddick, pro-vice chancellor of arts and humanities at the University of Sheffield, voiced a bleak outlook for the future of the teaching and practice of archaeology within universities:

Archaeological science is expensive, and does not attract r f driven by the search for economic growth. Student numbers are low, nationally, and although student satisfaction measures and price put it on a par with history and English, archaeology departments cannot attract students in the same numbers, and are finding it hard to cover their costs. (Braddick, 2013)

These issues highlight the new reality that university archaeology departments face and to which they must adapt as best they can.

Professor Mark Horton, academic at the University of Bristol and TV archaeologist, has offered his thoughts on the issue, and speaks of ‘repacking’ the archaeology degree:

[…] the solution — if we are to keep the archaeology sector at universities — is a radical rethink of what we offer, and how we package it to students. We need to go out to the schools and market archaeology as the best degree to study, and one that will repay the £60,000 investment, not necessarily in archaeology, but in a whole host of professions. (Horton, 2012: 48)

To ‘repackage’ archaeology in this context we need to consider some of the often under-utilized strengths that can be exploited to advance the discipline, namely the academic utility of the degree and the increasing understanding of the archaeology and heritage sector more broadly as a significant economic driver. It is up to university archaeology departments to take ownership of these traits to demonstrate the subject as academically and practically relevant to both students and employers, and economically imperative to government.

The most obvious strength for university archaeology departments to better promote is the relevance of archaeology as a multi-purpose, academically robust degree, and as one of the few disciplines able to produce students versed in theoretical issues and vocational practice, and equipped with both quantitative and qualitative skills.

The typical work of archaeological science — that of fieldwork and subsequent scientific analysis — allows students to develop quantitative skills founded on organization, measurement, and complex analytical examination, which can be utilized in a wide variety of contexts. Additionally, the post-processual turn of archaeology in the 1980s turned the attention of the discipline increasingly towards the present (see Ascherson, 2000). With the congruent rise of ‘heritage studies’, it is increasingly common for students to be exposed to contemporary issues, such as debates over matters of representation, cultural rights, repatriation, and alternate conceptions of cultural value. Such debates often deal with concepts and theories drawn from history, anthropology, philosophy, sociology, or literary studies, and promote qualitative research skills focussed on abstract and reflexive thinking.

The range of subject material that an archaeology degree encompasses produces a diversified skill set that few other degrees can match and that university archaeology departments should increasingly exploit, to both prospective students and their potential employers. The importance of highlighting the skills that archaeology students develop is demonstrated in Beatrix Arendt’s paper in this issue. She challenges an assertion by the American news website, The Daily Beast, that archaeology is a useless undergraduate degree, countering these claims by profiling two archaeology work projects — one a government project and the other a university outreach — and demonstrating the skill sets each engagement with the archaeological process produces.

The second point, in terms of ‘repacking’ the archaeology degree, is to be aware of the increasing importance of the economic value of archaeology and heritage. Prompted in part by the growth of global tourism, recent figures have shown heritage-based tourism to be worth somewhere in the region of £26.4bn to the UK’s national economy (HLF, 2013b). As this economic understanding develops, it is important that the image of the archaeologist moves from that of bulwark against economic development to active agents of economic development in their own right.

Archaeologist and heritage professionals (through applied academic research) make discoveries and interpret them to the public, which effectively adds to the historic environment, or as alternatively conceptualized, the ‘past’ (see Holtorf, 2006). This historic environment attracts people to visit particular locations — be that an actual dig, a heritage attraction, or a museum. If we are to see the products of archaeology as resources, then one of its primary understandings must be as an economic resource.

A key example here is the recent excavation in a car park in Leicester, UK, that resulted in the discovery of the skeletal remains of King Richard III. The discovery was made through archaeological research at the University of Leicester combined with expertise at local government level, as Professor David Mattingly, acting head of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History notes:

The synergy of the professional and academic partnership has been a key to our success over the years, with University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) staff contributing to teaching and fieldwork training of students and academic staff working as advisors on ULAS projects with a significant research element.The Richard III investigation highlights the relationship perfectly, with Richard Buckley and his ULAS staff leading the excavation, but a number of academics playing key roles, whether in the excavation and subsequent examination of Richard’s skeletal remains and genetic research as well as co-ordinating aspects of the wider public presentation of the discovery. (Leicester Mercury, 2013)

The results of this excavation (and its wider associated research) have been exceptional. It has provided the material remains of a King and shed light on his representation in cultural history, as his ‘hunchback’, immortalized by Shakespeare, proved to have an actual physiological basis. In academic terms, the excavation has provided key insights into both the nature of medieval kingship and the particular circumstances of the Battle of Bosworth at which King Richard died. The excavation has enhanced the archaeological and historical record and will provide further opportunities for academic research in the future.

Perhaps as importantly, given the remarks presented above, the excavation and its findings (dubbed the ‘Richard III effect’) have been a significant economic boon to the city of Leicester. Visitor numbers to Leicester Cathedral, the proposed site of the King’s reburial and venue of a current exhibition, have increased to 20 times their normal average from 40–50 per day to between 500–1000 (BBC, 2013a). Plans have just been approved for a new Richard III museum, which will see the redevelopment of a derelict Grade II listed building near to the excavation site, with the aim of attracting 100,000 visitors per year and producing an estimated £4.5m for the local economy per annum (Visit Leicester, 2013). Go Leicestershire (2013) are even offering short breaks to the city themed around the King. For just £79.00, two people can:

Take a city break in Leicester, where Richard III spent his last night before an untimely death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and enjoy exploring historical connections to the king by foot.

No wonder there is now a heated reburial controversy surrounding the King. The city of York has demanded the return of its infamous son to be interred in its Minster, presumably hoping to acquire some of the newly produced royal riches that he may bring (BBC, 2013c).

Clearly, then, the impetus for economic development in this case has been an archaeology project, supported by a university archaeology department. Critics (or cynics) may point out that this was a ‘once in a lifetime’ find, and that more prosaic academic investigations yield no such benefits. Yet, there are a number of examples of smaller-scale excavations that have resulted in significant academic and economic development. A notable example is the excavation carried out on an area of demolished terraced housing in Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne, from 1975 to 1984. Led by the late Charles Daniels of the Department of Archaeology at Newcastle University, the excavations uncovered the remains of Segedunum Roman Fort, the eastern terminal point of Hadrian’s Wall. The site is now part of a World Heritage listing and a visitor centre completed in 1997 attracts around 42,000 visitors to the area every year (TWAM, 2013).

University archaeology departments must take greater ownership over the economic developments of both their own work and congruent work that their graduates may engage in or produce, and publicize them as such. This needs to be directed towards both prospective students and those responsible for funding university archaeology departments. The discipline of archaeology needs to be able to clearly articulate its economic benefits as clearly as it does its contribution to scholarship.

Ultimately, there is a profound need for public archaeologists to help develop more effective forms of communication, not only in terms of transmitting the educational value of our work, but the congruent material benefits of archaeology, too.

Chiara Bonacchi’s paper in this issue demonstrates the importance of television and other digital media for promoting interest in archaeology. With the recent cancellation of Time Team, the programme she analyses, it is to be hoped that regular televisual presence concerning archaeology can be reestablished in this potent form.

Similarly, Suzie Thomas’s profile of Brian Hope-Taylor outlines his attempts to create an ‘adequate archaeological propaganda’ and demonstrates the lessons that can be drawn from previous attempts at public engagement. In Hope-Taylor’s case this was during the 1940s and his suggestions were aimed at educating the public about archaeological finds which would hopefully lead to an increased interest in conservation — an idea that Thomas notes bears striking resemblances to the development of the UK’s Portable Antiquities Scheme which was not fully realized until the late 1990s.

We could do worse than to following Hope-Taylor’s example. To develop ‘archaeological propaganda’ today does not mean changing what we do or finding new ways to do it, but to be better at communicating the benefits that archaeology brings, both as an activity in its own right but also for society at large, and to ensure people sit up and take notice of its benefits. We believe that the three research papers presented in this volume contribute to this dialogue.

Notes

1 Collini (2013: 8) notes that ‘between 1979 and 2011 student numbers increased by 320 per cent while public expenditure on higher education rose by only 165 per cent’.

2 Student fees are speculated to eventually rise to £20,000 (BBC, 2013b).

3 Minimum starting salaries for full-time archaeologists are recommended to be £15,836 while average starting salaries command between £18,000 and £20,000 (Prospects, 2012).