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+--- Thread: Free archaeology (/showthread.php?tid=5063)
Free archaeology - kevin wooldridge - 3rd September 2013
Doug Wrote:Yeah, I am guessing you are misunderstanding me. Accuracy and precision are tricky. As precision goes up accuracy goes down and other way around. Lets say you label everything in your area, lets say Scotland, as containing a site (yes, agree about landscapes but that is a whole other discussion). Well you are 100% accurate. You guessed where all the sites are- everywhere. Not very useful for most.
Not sure that landscape is an entirely different discussion. English Heritage have made clear over the past few years that both site and setting are important factors and I'd be pretty sure Historic Scotland feel the same...that is however by the by.
PM as you describe only becomes a factor where evaluation is qualiative.....i.e 'We accept that 'archaeology' is there, however it is our opinion that only a certain percentage of 'archaeology' is significant enough to warrant intervention. Predict where that might occur' In other countries (Norway for example), all buried 'heritage' is protected irrespective of its type and quality. Evaluation therefore becomes quantative. I am guessing in that circumstance predictive modelling would only work in establishing the negative i.e suggest areas where there was no 'archaeology'....I find it interesting that the same PM process might be used for contradictive results depending entirely on the rationale behind the whole process.....which to my mind at least clearly points to the most effective way to actually protect our buried heritage...!
Free archaeology - Jack - 3rd September 2013
I must be having a slow week. I still don't get it. All i see in your post is some percentages. You'll have to go slower and more basic.
first question.
what are you predicting with your model? Are you predicting the location of all archaeology (known and unknown) based on a mathematical model of where known archaeology is?
Free archaeology - Dinosaur - 3rd September 2013
Still all sounds like b***ocks to me, a lot of 'sites' are single discrete features, how'd you know they aren't there if you don't dig the whole site, and all of the sites? No big surprise then how rare things like e.g. excavated Viking burials in England are then, they ain't getting found cos no one has 'predicted' them? If you don't bother looking you don't find...good thing some of us still do...
Free archaeology - Doug - 3rd September 2013
Jack Wrote:what are you predicting with your model? Are you predicting the location of all archaeology (known and unknown) based on a mathematical model of where known archaeology is?
Answer- 1: whatever you want? Mesolithic camp sites, roman settlements, unicorn dens, everything.
2: hmmm ok short answer is yes. Long answer is there are multiple ways to do it, all of which work. You could go it with stats- linear regression or other types of regression models. You can do it with Bayesian maths. You could create a theatrical model based on blah blah blah.
So cramming years of work into a few sentences- how was it? You understand? Next set of questions?
Unit1- yeah- so I appreciate the rewrite but I still don't follow what you are saying.
Kev- So with landscapes I completely agree with what you say. While I appreciate that HS and EH has said landscapes are important they have yet to really put their foot down. If they did than every archaeological evaluation would not just be limited to the area of development impact. Instead we would have to fit our work into the wider landscapes. I would like to see that happen but as it is laws in most countries do in fact state that 'only a certain percentage of 'archaeology' is significant enough to warrant intervention' and none of them involve landscapes (at least in practice). So when I say landscapes are a whole other discussion I means in terms of commercial work and in current settings. Maybe that will change one day but for now local authority archaeologists, in the UK, are not putting planning permissions based on landscapes.
I should ask what you definition of archaeology is? Would a plowed field be considered archaeology? Even if you consider everything archaeology you will still have areas where you will not find any man made objects or alterations (excluding things like felling trees and causing erosion, global warming etc.) So even if you are only predicting everything that is person made PM still works.
Free archaeology - kevin wooldridge - 3rd September 2013
Doug Wrote:I should ask what you definition of archaeology is? Would a plowed field be considered archaeology?Under Norwegian heritage law a buried agricultural layer (dyrkningslag) can be classed as archaeological and indeed there are many i nteresting results from such layers, especially when dated to the mesolithic/neolithic and neolithic/bronze age interface. But as you say, not every curator would consider that as significant....
Free archaeology - Unitof1 - 3rd September 2013
Doug what I want is when any developer wants to develop any site they come to an archaeologist who does not work for the state (using what ever state criteria, software, her, that they have) and use mine what ever it might be and it might likely be an evaluation which is extremely cheap and inexpensive but from which I can make a living because the developer is my client and the client sees me as their pet archaeologist who will help them take on the nasty fascist state that we live in
Free archaeology - P Prentice - 4th September 2013
doug - your hitherto this salient and often i might say amusing posting is entirely at odds with this asertion. it sounds very much like the work of a statastician who works from headline data and who is so very far from the reality on the ground that it is actually funny!
Free archaeology - BAJR - 4th September 2013
Moving on... can I then ask... as we have now abandoned any semblance of FreeArchaeology debate...
Is there a feelign that geophysical evaluation ( even percentage based geophysical survey) is a valuable tool that is underused?
Target... rather than scatter gun. however... does this get away from the mesolithic site... the cist burial, the ephemeral post settings etc... the neolithic excarnation site? IS strip map sample the only way?
Free archaeology - P Prentice - 4th September 2013
geophysical survey is often a useful tool but is never an evaluation (other than of its own capabilities). s, m and s is another tool but is still far from reliable as it often relies on the removal of the most important context.
Free archaeology - Dinosaur - 4th September 2013
Did a job a couple of years ago on a scheduled site which EH had previously commissioned magnetometry and resistivity surveys on, neither of which seemed to have shown much. We did some of what was effectively strip-map-and-record, with minimal excavation, and then had some GPR done. In combination with having got a bit of a handle on the very complicated topography of the site, it turned out that the earlier mag and resi surveys had, in fact, recorded loads of archaeology in their own different ways, it just took the GPR, topo and a bit of digging to make sense of it all (after I'd got my head around all the different datasets)
...but I agree, geofizz can't characterise the archaeology of a site, however good it is, merely provides some hints - it's usually c**p at finding stuff like hundreds of bodies or Neolithic pits for a start