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+--- Thread: Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping (/showthread.php?tid=5649)
Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping - Marc Berger - 20th May 2015
Quote:If not, keep destroying.which makes it rarer and puts up the price? I am with hosty define a standard.
Quote:most of the ones taken these days are just embarrassingHow many site photos have you ever sold? I think its embarrassing spending loads of time cleaning stuff for pictures which will never show a tenth of the information that is on a plan or section. Pictures are rubbish. Put up a good picture and tell us why and I will attempt to tell you whats wrong with it.
Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping - Dinosaur - 20th May 2015
If you tried actually publishing anything you'd discover you can sell any number of site photos? - its called illustration....of course you've got to get people in the field to actually take useable pictures in the first place, or even have the vision to even realise that they could be used :face-thinks:
As a couple of recent personal e.g.s:
(1) Roman ditch running across site - normal practice these days would probably be to photograph a few excavated segments, probably not the whole 200m of ditch in the stripped area, and only 1 person in 100 would think of maybe including the extant modern hedgeline continuing the line of the boundary up the hillside beyond (neat evidence for continuity of boundary for 2000yrs that any reader can understand without any archaeo-waffle) - add in a couple of foreground scales and a few diggers in the middle distance for interest...
(2) Pair of Neo pits (Grooved Ware), quite cute anyway, but vastly improved by the absolutely stunning sea-view beyond (only slightly spoilt these days by Easington Colliery in between, can't win them all), makes it easier than a thousand words to convey the idea that yer Neolithic persons could pick their viewpoints for doing stuff.
Simples
Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping - P Prentice - 20th May 2015
so you are using photos for interpretation. i think you will find interpretation is fast being outmoded and god forbid you submit a report with a person in the photo and you will be struck off for having a machine in view! get back to the past where you belong.
Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping - Marc Berger - 20th May 2015
"If you tried actually publishing anything you'd discover you can sell any number of site photos? - its called illustration"
Is there a big market for these publishings?, do you even break even? You should try selfies and put them on facebook although I think the moneys made from the advertising images.
1) Somewhere theres a plan of that ditch and presumably some sections, there might even be a map locating these features in the landscape. They will have been drawn to within a few centimetres. There would be context numbers on them. I would be checking them against the pot report a bit concerned that some Inclosure hedge had been "dug" across a roman site and somebody had got their dating a bit 2000 year previous. Meanwhile in the fishshop I might come up with a use for the picture.
2)" makes it easier than a thousand words to convey the idea that yer Neolithic persons could pick their viewpoints for doing stuff" Not sure how you work out that it is a groove ware pit from a picture, shallow concave? but are you saying that all Neolithic persons did pick viewpoints for doing stuff. You don't have to provide a thousand words though I imagine that there are many pictures to illustrate the answer. What was it like in the opposite direction away from the sea for instance. Could be onto something here. The Pick a view point and the ignore it Neolithic. What to do if there was two view points like the sea in one direction and mountains in the other. What if fairy rings were considered the ultimate in view points. Meanwhile not sure wrapping fish and chips in a picture is that great an idea, bit worried about heavy metal contamination.
Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping - Dinosaur - 20th May 2015
1) Good work with the crystal ball by the Romano-locals then, sticking all their enclosures and stuff up against where was going to be an Enclosure boundary :face-approve:
2) Actually, location and view seem to have had quite a lot to do with where Neo stuff happened, on the current motorway scheme a lot of the pits have been turning up in pretty predictable locations, and I'm sure a lot of the ones we weren't allowed to look for would have too. In the case above the view in the other direction actually consisted of a rather steep hillside with the A19 on top, and some impressive fly-tipping in the foreground
Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping - Dinosaur - 20th May 2015
P Prentice Wrote:so you are using photos for interpretation. i think you will find interpretation is fast being outmoded and god forbid you submit a report with a person in the photo and you will be struck off for having a machine in view! get back to the past where you belong.
Never left :face-approve:
Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping - Marc Berger - 20th May 2015
you have evidence of the survival of the cadastral system through to post med in Yorkshire?
"turning up in pretty predictable locations," don't tell me, the motorway runs along the coast?
Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping - Mike.T. - 20th May 2015
A good picture ( ie taken by someone with at least basic competence at using a camera ) won't lie, whereas a badly drawn / misinterpreted section drawing will. I would have thought that was obvious.
Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping - Marc Berger - 20th May 2015
Nobody said that it wasn't all lies. You hold onto your "good". Badly drawn might be but a reflection of badly dug, give me a badly drawn of a goodly dug and no picture that competence will ever take of that goodly dug will ever preserve by record the truth. Keep your good, I have the truth.
Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping - Marc Berger - 20th May 2015
sorry mike although I quite enjoyed my rhetoric what I am getting at is that we dig in contexts and we register them in indexes to which we attach records. Now a picture might hang off that record and have its place but it is never in the driving seat.
I once went to a gallery in Cambridge where some German artist had concluded that they could supply all the pictures that you might need for life and had juxtaposed loads of babys in swaddling, sitting on the beach, first day at school, holding L plates......the concluding is that its a picture that has been taken before. Keeps Dino happy but it does nothing for the record.