A Digger reader has sent us shocking allegations about an IFA-registered archaeological unit based in the south of England. The reader names the unit in question, but we have decided not to publish the name pending an investigation by the IFA.

A few months ago, I worked for a while with [the unit]. I should like to warn any of your readers against working for them, and if possible warn potential clients about employing them.

I am not writing to get revenge for aslight of some sort. I am writing because the unit is the worst bunch of ‘cowboy’ diggers I have ever encountered, paying the barest lip-service to proper techniques and procedures, and they should not be allowed to get away with it.

The unit suffers from a negative attitude from top to bottom. One member of senior management has been quoted as saying, 'You should never have to resort to using a trowel,' and, 'This is what I think of trowels: they should only be used for cleaning tools.' The tools owned by the unit are few, and low quality: they did not own a single pickaxe when I was there.

One supervisor had no tools of his own, and lacked a basic understanding of the Harris matrix. Health and Safety on site were nearly non-existent, with diggers allowed to work close to JCB’s, without hardhats. There was minimal first-aid equipment, no running water, and sites which had not been cleaned of modern sewage, asbestos and syringes.

The standard of archaeology was appalling:
on one urban site, the top three feet of stratigraphy was machined away, leaving only the bases of contexts remaining. On this multi-phase site in a medieval town- centre, I estimate that two thirds of the contexts were destroyed before hand- digging began. The shoddy organisation on site, and the ridiculous time constraints for this large area meant that maybe only 10% of the potential archaeology was recognised, and of course only sample cuts were put into these. No attempts were made, or allowed, to excavate contexts carefully. The idea was to remove everything fast, and find as little as possible. The final plan was interpreted as areas, rather than as the superimposed phases that they really were.

A second site, considerably larger, was given a small number of workers, and only six weeks to excavate. After four weeks, we had done only a quarter of it. When human skeletons were discovered by the machine, so much overburden was removed that only the bases of the skeletons were left. The skeletons were then dug up as fast as possible, and we were told that it was unlikely that they would be examined at all. Similarly, we were told that environmental samples were regularly dumped rather than being examined.

The permanent staff I met told me that such things were normal in this unit. They also told me that many units will not employ you if you have worked for this unit. I would therefore suggest that anyone reading this would think twice before applying to work with them, because to be frank, this company should not even be in business let alone flaunting its Institute of Field Archaeologists (IFA) approval.

The Digger editor adds: We have no independent way of verifying this story, but we are passing the details we have, including the name of the unit, but not our reader’s identity, to the IFA. We are also calling on the IFA to fully investigate the allegations, and to make the result of these investigations public.

It is important that the IFA investigate these allegations, and is seen to do so. Should the allegations become widely known (ie beyond the archaeological community) and it also emerges that the allegations were not investigated, then the result could be damage not just to the unit concerned and the IFA but to archaeology and archaeologists generally. This is particularly the case where the proper excavation of burials is concerned, as last year’s experience at St Pancras showed.

It is in everyone’s interests that the allegations are thoroughly investigated and either proved (and appropriate action taken), or disproved.

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