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22nd September 2010, 06:48 PM
It is a perfect view of archaeology today... (perhaps extreme... but not far off!) I was once pulled up for a report where I found nothing! hells teeth... what would happen if a detectorist or even a general member of the public was stopped and asked, why they found nothing, and why they did not present seven copies of a fully researched report about finding nothing? Why is it that preserved in situ actually means ploughed, bunnied or flattened so that thos folk in the future, will have nothing to look at anyway... but, hey, it has been preserved (sort of!) Sho me a site where preservation in situ worked ?? the piling that changes the water table, the the vibrocompaction that liquefies the site... the rampant rabbits, gentle burrowing? While we can only ask... please sir... can we..... er... look at this site in an archaeological way please.... NO comes the booming reply... come back when ye are devoid of requirements and then we cannot stop you.... ... hmmmm worth a go! :face-huh:
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23rd September 2010, 09:28 AM
BAJR Wrote:Sho me a site where preservation in situ worked ??
:
The Sweet Track, Somerset levels
Steven
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23rd September 2010, 10:10 AM
 you fell neatly into my trap...
It is easy to name one or two... and even then... for example... Flag Fen... and their tracks... what happens when the money dries up (pardon the pun)
To return to the Sweet track... here is the assessment
Quote:...Excavation showed that the trackway timbers still retain the same visual appearance which they had during their initial exposure by the Somerset Levels Project in the 1970s and 1980s. The upper components of the structure were soft and had very poor surface detail while the lower elements appeared to be in better condition and retained good surface detail such as toolmarks. Detailed analysis of the wood samples, however, showed that all parts of the structure were very badly degraded, with exceedingly high moisture contents and very low specific gravities. This, together with the evidence of previous studies suggests that the present condition of the timbers is a result of rapid decay during and immediately after the active use of the structure combined with very slow degradation over thousands of years by bacteria operating in micro-aerobic or anaerobic conditions....
..... In 1983 a grant was obtained from the National Heritage Memorial Fund to purchase an area of land on Shapwick Heath as a Nature Reserve and to install a water pumping and distribution system along a 500m stretch of the trackway to ensure its preservation.......
http://www.eng-h.gov.uk/ArchRev/rev96_7/strack.htm
So even with constant and careful monitoring and attempts to preserve in situ.... the analysis of the structure showed that all parts of the structure were very badly degraded - though it is thought this happened in the past . Is that a success.. and if that is the case... then how long can we maintain it? the pumping... of water... will that last 20 years? 50? 100? 200? do we try to hold back nature like Cnut? I also note that only 500m of the original 2km has been preserved... is the other 1.5km lost forever to decay?
The debate seems to have moved over to Preservation in situ... which quite clearly fails... more often that it wins (and these wins are often only temporary respites in slow inexorable decay).
To return to the Helmet debate, and indeed Uo1s classic rant...
The Helmet question.... better lost? or found?
Better out ? or in an enviroment where one day it will (no ifs or buts) will be destroyed totaly?
The main issue (imho) is ensuring that the information that was with the helmet is recovered too... the helmet is nice, and will look lovely on a mantlepiece or museum... but how it got there? what evidence do we have fopr its final moments... now thats real treasure.
It is baffling that in the UK we can have a two tier system where the c. 4000 arcaheologists that find even a 1930s bottle cap, must ensure reporting, conservation, archive, research and storage... while the 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of the population can just a) throw it in the bin.... or b) flog it to the highest bidder. Do we clothe ourselves in the mantle of moral superiority on purpose? or because we like to think we are better than that... after all arcaheology does not need the money does it? we are all independently wealthy and have no need for filthy lucre...
We are the miners of the past... but we are more like indentured slaves to the past!
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23rd September 2010, 12:08 PM
Hi
Your quote stopped just before the actual key statement of that report which is:
"The assessment has shown that the present water management system is succeeding in maintaining the condition of the trackway"
So it's more a triumph of selective quotation rather than proving your point!
I don't think the point that every physical object is susceptible to entropy is a reasoned argument for allowing any method of retrieval. So what if most people do not have the training, qualifications and understanding of context. Knowing what information is lost by simply hacking things out of the ground is part of what makes an archaeologist. It's not a case of moral superiority, it's simply having specialist knowledge. If the idea that "better out than buried whatever the method" is accepted, then there is no point in having archaeologists is there? Because by advocating artefact retrieval in any circumstances that's setting up a proposition that only objects have historical/economic value and that the context is unimportant. Personally I don't care what MDs do, I am an archaeologists. MY job is to ensure a as complete as possible record is made of past human activity when that information is at immediate threat, not to find shiny things. I may have research interests which can only be investigated through excavation of non-threatened sites, but in those circumstances I'm even more bound by the requirement to record as the only threat to the archaeology is ME.
So what if some shiny things don't get found? Who cares is the human race loses some more Roman coins to eroision? All this excitment over hoards for example, mostly they are just collections of coins, all of which have alredy been identified from other finds and have already been fully conserved and curated. The most intresting thing about the Shapwick hoard for exmple was that is was located under the floor a of room in a villa!
What contribution to knowledge about the Roman period has that helmet given us, oh it's shown that someone had a helmet in the roman period, whoopse do! A pre-development investigation of a small Roman period settlement will supply so much more about the lives of local people, their diet, their health, their economic situation, their agricultural practices, the environment in which they lived, it may give us a glimpse into their belief system, it may show us patterns of activity shared with other people in places hundreds of miles from them, it can show us the geographical movement of individuals, the trading links etc......etc..
Just because lots of people think a helmet is more exciting doesn't mean their right! After all, millions of people buy Coldplay albums! without Irony!
Something isn't good just because lots of people can't discriminate.
Steven
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23rd September 2010, 12:16 PM
EERRRMMM.....without provenance, why do you keep calling it a Roman helmet, rather than, say, a product of Camelot, or the original Hyperborean prototype upon which all Roman parade helmets were based, or maybe a modern facsimile knocked-up in a back-street garage in Carlisle by a (admittedly skilled) unemployed artesan who in no way wished to fool the archaeological and art world at all......are you privy to some independent scientific dating results not revealed to the world at large, or does it have 'Made in Italy' stamped on it somewhere? :face-stir:
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23rd September 2010, 12:25 PM
Dinosaur Wrote:EERRRMMM.....without provenance, why do you keep calling it a Roman helmet, rather than, say, a product of Camelot, or the original Hyperborean prototype upon which all Roman parade helmets were based, or maybe a modern facsimile knocked-up in a back-street garage in Carlisle by a (admittedly skilled) unemployed artesan who in no way wished to fool the archaeological and art world at all......are you privy to some independent scientific dating results not revealed to the world at large, or does it have 'Made in Italy' stamped on it somewhere? :face-stir:
Hi
Good point, well made !
Steven
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23rd September 2010, 01:22 PM
Might even be the helmet of a Centauri pilot, crash-landed on earth, passed off as payment for spare parts to fix his ship.
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23rd September 2010, 02:16 PM
Steven Wrote:Hi
Your quote stopped just before the actual key statement of that report which is:
What contribution to knowledge about the Roman period has that helmet given us, oh it's shown that someone had a helmet in the roman period, whoopse do! A pre-development investigation of a small Roman period settlement will supply so much more about the lives of local people, their diet, their health, their economic situation, their agricultural practices, the environment in which they lived, it may give us a glimpse into their belief system, it may show us patterns of activity shared with other people in places hundreds of miles from them, it can show us the geographical movement of individuals, the trading links etc......etc..
.
On the other hand an excavation might well just tell us that someone dug a ditch in the Roman Period which later silted up. Whoopsee Doo.
Isn't Archaeology is the study of man though surviving material remains, of which this Helmet is one ? Presumably once the findspot has been identified Geophysical survey could possibly reveal an unknown Roman settlement, one that wouldn't have been discovered if not for the MD user.
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23rd September 2010, 03:39 PM
Quote:[SIZE=3]Something isn't good just because lots of people can't discriminate.
[/SIZE]
Steve
Quote:[SIZE=3]Therefore every museum in the land should be held in contempt by Archaeologists, despite the fact that museums, which are for the most part funded by the public are showing them what they want to see.
[/SIZE]
Mike.T
It all about curation. I get up in the morning and say that I am an archaeologist. I believe that there is a demand for my product and see that product as being produced from observations made in context. Steve gets paid to get up in the morning to believe that the archaeology belongs to the state. A sanctimonious bureaucracy has grow up from this situation which demands an archive where things like the details of the project bureaucracy become part of that archive and as hosty has pointed out even a project that found, in his opinion, nothing was for what ever reason seen as unsatisfactory, by some dubiously appointed authority, for curation. But this authority has absolutely no responsibility to the ?museum?. The thing that could be a death mask proves conclusively in a democratic, what the public wants world that they want shiny things and not hostys seven pillars of nothing there. The state should stop inventing curators who don?t live in museums who don?t have the responsibility of storage and entropy to deal with, but who think that their standards and guidance?s are justification in themselves.
Unfortunately archaeologists also have a long way to go to take over the museums from the bunch of charlatans who control them. The evolution of commercial archaeology not only created the pusedo curator it also cut archaeologists off from museums.
Quote:
Isn't Archaeology is the study of man though surviving material remains, of which this Helmet is one ? Presumably once the findspot has been identified Geophysical survey could possibly reveal an unknown Roman settlement, one that wouldn't have been discovered if not for the MD user.
lets say the md lied but a unknown roman settlment was still found in the spot that was not where the MD found it. That would be spooky
Reason: your past is my past
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23rd September 2010, 04:00 PM
Mike.T. Wrote:On the other hand an excavation might well just tell us that someone dug a ditch in the Roman Period which later silted up. Whoopsee Doo.
Isn't Archaeology is the study of man though surviving material remains, of which this Helmet is one ? Presumably once the findspot has been identified Geophysical survey could possibly reveal an unknown Roman settlement, one that wouldn't have been discovered if not for the MD user.
Hi
Study of human...human activity, you risk a real dressing down with that definition.
Do you see the MD paying for a geophysical survey to investigate the potential site? No. So this "site" has no more or no less potential than any field anywhere that somebody has ever found an artefact in. In fact most hoards and other finds of treasure of this type are isolated and not associated with sites so it can be argued that statistically there is less possibility of this find indicating a potential site. Put that together with the fact that the findspots from Treasure and those reported to the PAS are kept deliberately secret from most people there is even less chance of the site's potential ever being investigated.
Why should this particular artefact find get more archaeological investigation than a Roman pottery scatter found in a field? In fact the pottery is a much better indicator of a potential site than an individual metal artefact. Does this particular artefact's economic value mean that it is evidence of a site of higher significance than a potential site recognised from a monetary valueless pottery scatter? I don't think so.
I wouldn't call the investigation of a single ditch an "excavation" but I get your point that detailed investigation can also provide very limited data of somewhat dubious value but...and a very big but...at least that data is properly recorded and as the silt may well have preserved environmental data the potential for adding to a larger picture is there because ALL relevant information pertaining to the ditch has been recorded. Also the presence of the ditch indicates activity associated with land management so that in turn implies agriculture or drainage of a nearby activity area, it also means that the ditch filled up naturally rather than being deliberately filled and it DIRECTLY proves that Roman period activity took place at that place. A stray metal find doesn't even prove that, all it shows is that a helmet was at that spot when it was found, no info on deposition, no info on potential of find spot to be a site.
Steven
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