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Free archaeology - Unitof1 - 13th September 2013
The landowners seem to have made a killing from the wheat harvest this year. They are now busy sub soiling and then drilling with some of the biggest shiniest tractors that I have seen for a long time. and they are all on the cap for the next five years....
Just wondered if gephis could pick out the damage done to your archaeological resource by sub-soiling?
Free archaeology - PhaseSI - 13th September 2013
Unitof1 Wrote:The landowners seem to have made a killing from the wheat harvest this year. They are now busy sub soiling and then drilling with some of the biggest shiniest tractors that I have seen for a long time. and they are all on the cap for the next five years....
Just wondered if gephis could pick out the damage done to your archaeological resource by sub-soiling?
Potentially. You can sometimes see if features have been truncated by ploughing in geophysics data. But obviously the better and more reliable way to do this would be to carry out a geophysical survey and then target the trenching to cover anomalies / features of interest. I'm not advocating the sole use of geophysics. Just better surveys to inform the follow up work.
Would your random trench that happens not to hit any of the archaeological resource provide the required information?
Free archaeology - Hamish - 13th September 2013
Unitof1 Wrote:The landowners seem to have made a killing from the wheat harvest this year. They are now busy sub soiling and then drilling with some of the biggest shiniest tractors that I have seen for a long tim
Most of the wheat grains I looked at in the fields while photographing cropmarks around harvest time were poorly developed - probably due to the hot/dry weather this summer, so I don't think the harvest has been that great.
Free archaeology - BAJR - 14th September 2013
Quote:I'm not advocating the sole use of geophysics. Just better surveys to inform the follow up work.
I am with you on that. and after seeing some amazing results from a german geophysics group I met in EAA Pilsen conference I would say we are actually cutting off our noses ... when we could target trenching... using geophysics as the guide.
From what I heard on the Farmers news this morning ( yes I do listen!) it was a good harvest but not GOOOD and teh wheat harvest was 90% with some mixed results. - so in general - not bad... but not trumpet parrping
Free archaeology - Dinosaur - 15th September 2013
Was once involved in cleaning up what was meant to be a longbarrow (on chalk) from the geophysics, but actually turned out to be, after much head-scratching, two parallel 1"-wide subsoiler marks - sad but true...
BAJR Wrote:I am with you on that. and after seeing some amazing results from a german geophysics group I met in EAA Pilsen conference I would say we are actually cutting off our noses ... when we could target trenching... using geophysics as the guide.
That's what we usually do, use trial trenching to test/refine the geophysics results (or in some cases to figure out what the h*ll they're showing) - isn't that normal practice?
Free archaeology - Unitof1 - 16th September 2013
Hamish wheat comes from a hot dry climate. Heres a sample of whats going on notice that the landowners like to set records
http://www.fwi.co.uk/articles/13/09/2013/141058/video-uk-wheat-yield-record-broken-in-lincolnshire.htm
and heres what English nature advises
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaT_rTx6ISs
think is hosty
Quote:when we could target trenching... using geophysics as the guide.seems to me that the trap is that you are evaluating the geophysics for the site based on the premise that doing a trench evaluation based on any existing none geophysics evidence would be more expensive. My view is that trenching is direct, simple and a basic archaeological principle of evaluation. Yes its not perfect but I would suggest that geophysics is almost worthless without evaluation and that if you were to evaluate the geophysics results that you still have to sample the areas of the site that the geophysics did not produce any results to verify the negative results of the geophysics map for the site. Geophysics is basically treasure hunting, tuned to specific quite often specific scientific anomalies where as physical examination by an archaeologist covers all possibilities. You should view it that areas that geophysics shows nothing would require an even higher density of evaluation by trench because for one archaeology is rarer in those areas and so possibly significant!
Free archaeology - P Prentice - 16th September 2013
Unitof1 Wrote:.......... that areas that geophysics shows nothing would require an even higher density of evaluation by trench because for one archaeology is rarer in those areas and so possibly significant!and for two you have no other reliable data as to what is there
Free archaeology - Unitof1 - 16th September 2013
your getting good at this
Free archaeology - P Prentice - 16th September 2013
and you might to when you realise that 90% of what we are after is in the plough soil
Free archaeology - Unitof1 - 16th September 2013
like plough soil? With subsoiling that's all that is left