Oh thats a shame..........

[P Prentice]

and i will still argue that it dont matter which way round you do it as long as it works

[Jack]

Ah but does it work the other way round? If you assume you know the date of something (say a certain type of pottery) before you measure it you will always dismiss those dates that don't agree...........missing the possibility that the accepted date range for that something (pottery) is wrong.

Its like assuming all you ranging rods are 2m long because you think they are and they all seem the same length rather than getting out a tape measure and checking................oops they are all actually 1.9m long.

[Ken Denham]

What we need to remember is our jobs, as field archaeologists. That is to recover as much information as we can, as forensically as we can on site. Interpretation of that information is out in the public domain.

[Dinosaur]

Its like assuming all you ranging rods are 2m long because you think they are and they all seem the same length rather than getting out a tape measure and checking................oops they are all actually 1.9m long.

I once worked for a large unit, which shall remain nameless since they're still around, who spent a load of money buying a van-load of second-hand ranging rods to repaint, apparently without noticing they were imperial.....loads of 1.8m ranging rods resulted...doh! :0

Assume you've been suckered into buying the same batch repainted to include the pointy bit? :face-kiss:

[P Prentice]

Ah but does it work the other way round? If you assume you know the date of something (say a certain type of pottery) before you measure it you will always dismiss those dates that don't agree...........missing the possibility that the accepted date range for that something (pottery) is wrong.

Its like assuming all you ranging rods are 2m long because you think they are and they all seem the same length rather than getting out a tape measure and checking................oops they are all actually 1.9m long.

i think you are chasing your own tail

[Sith]

I once worked for a large unit, which shall remain nameless since they're still around, who spent a load of money buying a van-load of second-hand ranging rods to repaint, apparently without noticing they were imperial.....loads of 1.8m ranging rods resulted...doh!

Did they also invest in a job lot of those special planning frames that measures 1m to the outside? They left you with an 50mm blind spot all the way round that many uninitiated diggers filled by simply expanding what was visible to fit. On the plus side, this must have increased productivity but probably not as much as the mega 5m by 5m frames we once borrowed from some chaps in Baldock.

[Dinosaur]

Did they also invest in a job lot of those special planning frames that measures 1m to the outside? They left you with an 50mm blind spot all the way round that many uninitiated diggers filled by simply expanding what was visible to fit. On the plus side, this must have increased productivity but probably not as much as the mega 5m by 5m frames we once borrowed from some chaps in Baldock.

All the steel planning frames on a job in Scotland in 1981 had been welded-up by the kids in the local borstal - none were square, and all the rectangles varied quite a lot in size...trying to fit the resulting plans together in PX certainly required quite a lot of 'bodging'.....worryingly they were shipped back to the SDD stores at the end of the job, so presumably there are other Scottish sites of the era with slightly suspect plans? :0

[Jack]

i think you are chasing your own tail

Woof, woof.

More like banging my head against a wall.

I guess its true, you can't teach an old dog new tricks :face-stir:

[P Prentice]

or your grandma to suck eggs

[Jack]

Grin}

So as an aside, but along the same lines...............two questions

1)When did the Neolithic period start

and equally

2)When did the Iron Age end?