Posted by Unit of 1:
Quote:quote:In Mr mans world the dba is not done by the archaeologist at the pointy end âperiod. In 1mans world (engineering-solution to everything = build) he has 11 âarchaeologistsâ and their job is to go to public inquires- no trowel required. And little by little the concept of an archaeologist is being sliced into ever smaller disparate pieces, pieces- apparently all in conflicts of interest- so example we are now quite happily advertise for post ex-teams and allow post ex go to tender.
An 'engineering solution' quite often means 'build somewhere else', 'build less' or 'don't build at all', the point being to reduce the damage done to archaeology. The implication of your post is that we should never challenge the engineering proposal; instead, you imply, we should say 'goody - they are going to build on an archaeological site, what a good chance to dig it up'.
The whole point of my attitude to DBAs is to
avoid conflicts of interest, either real or percieved. Automatically including the DBA with the fieldwork contract
creates a conflict of interest.
On the post-ex, we are probably in agreement - I would always be very unhappy about separating a post-ex contract from a fieldwork one, because the final report should preferably always be written by the person who led the fieldwork.
Quote:quote:Hosty I suspect that for trenches to do the finding on their own somewhere around 20% coverage, might be more, is required. I think that archaeologists have a lot more work to do on this, particularly feed back in the field. You see a lot of grid patterns which were presumably agreed by the system and then the poor unfortunate goes out and does them. What I would like to see are the people in the field plying some theories and reacting to the outcomes of their observations-topographic, geomorphological, experience, one last one for luck . In as much as gephiz has been mentioned thereâs space for augur surveys, micromorph and lidar is getting interesting. it all should be seen a s aid for trenching
There is a measure of agreement here as well - I strongly advocate getting as much information as possible from DBA and non-intrusive work before (a) deciding to do trenching or (b) designing the trench layout. A well-designed trenching programme, targeted using the best available information, can usually achieve much better results than twice the quantity of trenching laid out randomly or on a grid.
Where trenching is necessary, we are very rarely, if ever, going to be able to do 20% samples, as you advocate; so it is particularly important to make the most efficient use possible of the trenching that we can do.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
