Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Professional archaeologists moan about "unpublished" archaeological work!

Archaeology: Hidden treasure
By Matt Ford
Published online 7 April 2010
The explosion in commercial archaeology has brought a flood of information. The problem now is figuring out how to find and use this unpublished literature, reports Matt Ford ...

Oh this is just precious.  Some archaeologists are getting all smarmy about "unpublished" work by archaeologists hired for private projects.  Tee hee hee.  Yeah, like the um - what would you call them - you know - those professionals who are funded by universities and private archaeological institutes - can take 10, 20, 30, 40 years to publish findings and even never publish a fricking single word of what their digs uncovered and what they thought about it.  But what they do is all good because it's done in the name of academia.  Yeah.  Right.

Even where such work has been published, it is often not available to the average citizen like yours truly, simply by clicking online and reading the latest.  Or travelling to the main academic library in your state - but tough bones, you're out of luck, lady, because we don't have that kind of stuff here (library of a major university engaged in research) Nooooooo!  It's publish or perish still in academia and you don't get nothing for free, especially these days.  If you're lucky, you get some news articles that barely scratch the surface of finds, and then everything disappears into the Archaeological Underground Network...   If you are really lucky and have the money, you might be able to buy an official published report if you cough up $300 or $400 or more for something printed and sold by one of the few academic publishers or one of the university presses.

FRAUDS!  HYPOCRITES!  Just come out and admit it's about the money and the control of information that you are losing following a 19th century paradigm that just is not justifiable in this 21st century world.  Zoom zoom zoom...

Bwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!  What does it feel like, knowing that information you want to have is out there but you can't get your hands on it?  Bwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!

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