God yes George.

It came up in one or two discussions in a well known society on facebook: The posts asking the question get deleted or the threads get closed. Where I've found archaeo sites that try to address value, there's no wish to engage with justifying why value is assigned (and sometimes people get very annoyed that the question is being asked). Even the Portal, on the few threads that it's been brought up on, doesn't get a huge response. Interesting thread that one because it happened over a number of years and we managed to predict what would happen to the discipline (how it would get hit).

I think that people assume that you're a troll if you ask for justification of 'importance'. Until this point, I don't think that anyone has had to think about it. I'm not convinced that anyone is now.

All the best

Jon

"There are many types of value but not all are quantifiable "

Anything that has value can be quantified using the definitions and methods described in documents such as Stern. (Stern is very good at doing this and explaining how it is done).

Inter-generational equality is the main part of the archaeological argument (preservation for future generations). Stern's methods are ideal for this.