Sir,

I am writing to your newspaper, with the sad news that we are seeing major problems in public archaeology provision; in the way of loss of jobs in particular.

Archaeology is still a very popular participation activity across Britain, with much being made of fieldwork, meetings, classes and so on, and with the great discovery of Richard III's burial, you would think there was money from the public sector to encourage this interest.

However, we find in Wales that the National Museum and Galleries in Wales is cutting back on 36 jobs across its outlets, and with news about the loss of jobs with CADW Welsh Historic Monuments' possible amalgamation with the Historic Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments in Wales, it is a pretty sorry picture for the future of archaeology.

Even the private sector is cutting back on what we see provided for archaeology. Time Team, the popular Channel 4 archeological series, has now been dropped. We have seen the closure of some small provincial museums in England also.

The next target for cut backs will be the university departments, and councils that still have in-house archaeologists, all providing outreach services which educate the public at schools and groups; and more adventurous community archaeology in the form of researching fieldwork and public participation archaeological excavation. The government is also making it seemingly easy to develop sites across the land, with the removal in locations for the pre requisite to have archaeologists on site to monitor for potential archaeology being found; with such as the Newport Ship, or the Viking Jorvik's of our beautiful diverse heritage.

It may be that archaeology now becomes as it used to be redundant and irrelevant, before the excitement of some of Britain's greatest archaeological discoveries in the 1980s, such as the Mary Rose, and Rose Theatre - which really stirred public interest in archaeology. This all developed the need to see archaeology brought into the main stream of development funded archaeology, also into schools and even the growth of media archaeology with the likes of Time Team.

It is time for archaeology to disappear, or would readers like to see it make a big come back? May we have your view's direct at: Archaeology Cymru, 82 Cardiff Road, Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, CF63 2NW, or email: [email protected]">[email protected]

Karl-James Langford PGDipAH (Leics),

Senior Archaeologist with Archaeology Cymru.