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Training's never going to beat experience, you almost never, ever, find what the DBA/PD/whatever said was going to be there, so need the knowledge to know what the h*** it is you have just found and whether it's significant, certainly in my own limited experience it's nothing-WBs where I've found swords, dead vikings etc etc. Being able to recognise all parts of the fragmented human skeleton is always handy, which unless you've done a palaeopathology MSc is only going to come from digging a hundred or two and then washing several hundred more (I've just been washing some and it's patently obvious that the average digger couldn't tell human bone if their lives depended on it, judging by all the animal bone and other (non-bone) finds labelled up as parts of the human anatomy, and the slightly wierd distribution of body parts into some of the bags). With reference to the parallel thread, it would be interesting to know how many dead foetuses and neonates have been missed over the years because they were assumed to be dead rabbits/dogs etc. How many of you reading this can honestly claim to be able to tell frags of Roman brike/tile from the post-med stuff it's often mixed up with, etc, etc?
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isnt what is wrong is that from a producing archaeology point of view is that it is a massive waste of an experienced archaeologist doing a watching brief unless there is a bloody good archaeological reason and if there was a good archaeological reason why is it a watching brief. As far as I am concerned monitoring (it is verboten to call them watching briefs) should be abolished as a mitigation strategy. What needs to be looked at is the numbers of monitorings that resulted in significant finds leading to excavation,- is it less than 3%? -and the number of negatives, is it–80%? I think that if these were quantified it would be very apparent that they are ridicules wastes of money in proportion to what they produce. What we would find is that the ones in the middle were where we went to look at a feature that we already knew was there which could have been tackled before the development schedule.
Yes you will always find things that were not expected but so what, thats a feature of virtually any hole in the ground. What seems to be going on is that the curators are relying on, you will find something, it might not have been what we expected but its not really significant but just enough to make a condition seem a reasonable gambit, on the safe side.
If you were a salaried archaeologist working from an imaginary museum you would not go out and do watching briefs. You might drop in somewhere if you happened to know that some works were cutting some interesting alignment –town wall, ditch, even then you would probably ask the developer to call you when they dug the feature and if they forgot to call you it probably would not have been the end of the world.
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Please everyone, don't feed the troll.
At least I REALLY hope it's a troll...:o)
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The issue that this raises for me is one of professionalism. Absolutely no offence meant and no criticism intended of the indiviudal concerened, but regardless of what may be common practice, surely it cannot be right to send someone out on their own (for any task) unless they are competent and confident that they are able to do it? Obviously everyone has to start somewhere, there is always a first time, but the first couple of times should be with supervision in order to explain the procedural matters that have been questioned and to get the person gping, so to speak, and to ensure that they do know what they are doing. To do otherwise rather smacks of non complaince with Codes and Standards....
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Arnt you trying to turn it into a question of professionalisum like this bod who is worried about taking levels back to an OD. The only excuse that an archaeologist should go anywhere near a developers hole is that developers are constantly missing significant archaeology which in my experience they are not, it?s the curation which has not sort an inexpensive evaluation. We the archaeologists are trying to minimise this wanton destruction mainly through preservation by record but in this case applied to trench walls cut by someone else. We even pretend that they are contexts, a magical ability to turn a single context planning technique through 90 degrees. The watching brief exercise is eminently about having someone who can be bothered to go and look for some archaeology for the cheapest prise but on a site that we have next to no evidence that there might be anything of interest. It?s a miserable exercise from start to finish. The money paid by the developer does nothing for archaeology. It?s a monitoring ponce. It seems to me that the activity is minimum territory. Having someone there who has dug a 100 skeles because they just might recognise a neonate digit would be a waste of life.
I am pretty sure that after unpacking the dumpy once or twice, lent the staff up against the trench once or twice picked it up from being blown down then gone and written the greyest negative report ever that the equipment will be left in the transport until there is a good excuse to use it and it wont be on a watching brief.
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Unitof1 Wrote:Arnt you trying to turn it into a question of professionalisum like this bod who is worried about taking levels back to an OD. The only excuse that an archaeologist should go anywhere near a developers hole is that developers are constantly missing significant archaeology which in my experience they are not, it?s the curation which has not sort an inexpensive evaluation. We the archaeologists are trying to minimise this wanton destruction mainly through preservation by record but in this case applied to trench walls cut by someone else. We even pretend that they are contexts, a magical ability to turn a single context planning technique through 90 degrees. The watching brief exercise is eminently about having someone who can be bothered to go and look for some archaeology for the cheapest prise but on a site that we have next to no evidence that there might be anything of interest. It?s a miserable exercise from start to finish. The money paid by the developer does nothing for archaeology. It?s a monitoring ponce. It seems to me that the activity is minimum territory. Having someone there who has dug a 100 skeles because they just might recognise a neonate digit would be a waste of life.
I am pretty sure that after unpacking the dumpy once or twice, lent the staff up against the trench once or twice picked it up from being blown down then gone and written the greyest negative report ever that the equipment will be left in the transport until there is a good excuse to use it and it wont be on a watching brief.
Hi
I presume from this that you do not take on work from developers that involve you carrying out a watching brief?
Steven
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There are different types of watching briefs requiring different levels of skill and experience. At one extreme there is the watching brief which is ensure that the contractor does what they are meant to do when things have been designed to preserve the archaeology. At the other extreme there are watching briefs because that is the only solution possible and it is known that good archaeology will be disturbed.
Yes everybody has to start somewhere but my concerns about people doing watching briefs without experience is largely to do with health and safety. In particular being too close to the machine.
By the sound of it Tundercat you have never actually been on a watching brief and hence why you are asking about things such as measuring heights. I suggest that you would do better to worry about your own safety and ask your employers for training in doing watching briefs.
Peter
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Quote:By the sound of it Tundercat you have never actually been on a watching brief and hence why you are asking about things such as measuring heights. I suggest that you would do better to worry about your own safety and ask your employers for training in doing watching briefs.
I would concur with DrP ... get training.. and be with someone first to see what is needed
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I hope you have seen the risk assessment?
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If this is the same thundercat who just set themselves up writing dbas in a recent thread, I doubt there's an employer, and there's no-one to blame but themselves. And I'll stop there before my rant blows the AUP to bits. I'm unimpressed. This isn't funny any more. I've just realised how genuinely depressing this is.
