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...and H&S and the client's invert levels tend to handicap any meaningful investigation these days
...although I don't miss drawing the inside of the d*** things
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Dinosaur Wrote:"...from 0.5m to 1.2m in diameter and from 0.1m to 0.6m in depth; very few of the features were either large or deep." (Tavener 1996, 183) Certainly seem to work fine around here, that pretty much covers all the features at Nosterfield, Marton le Moor, sites around Catterick, all the dated ones from other A1 projects, everything I'm aware of West Yorkshire and probably most if not all of the hundreds dug in Northumberland...very unusual for anything to be bigger than c.1-1.2m diameter
Not much scope for waterlogging here, methinks
But, know where there are c.1600BCish pits covered in (badly degraded) peat which has to come under the heading of 'promising' if the rest of the site ever gets dug, so the situation's far from hopeless :face-approve:
...the main problem is that they're mostly going to occur not in the places that those nice clients bung us cash to go play :face-crying:
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Kel Wrote:Pits which are inclined to stay waterlogged are usually wells. There's a whole different kettle of worms.
maybe so maybe not. some could become waterlogged when the local hydrology changed - as has been witnessed on other prehistoric sites
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers
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Dinosaur Wrote:Not much scope for waterlogging here, methinks
But, know where there are c.1600BCish pits covered in (badly degraded) peat which has to come under the heading of 'promising' if the rest of the site ever gets dug, so the situation's far from hopeless :face-approve:
...the main problem is that they're mostly going to occur not in the places that those nice clients bung us cash to go play :face-crying:
you can get research grants u know
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers
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prentice so you are now looking for a well that might have been dug to find water which was presumably because there wasnt enough water about on the surface and then you want a flooding event which then keep the well waterlogged until excavation. Although this sounds like a well and is possibly all wells- then what are you looking for- is it evidence that it is not a well
Reason: your past is my past
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P Prentice Wrote:so when is a variation a regional difference? i would contend that the patchy and uneven spread of communal monuments reflects a patchy and uneven spread of cults or religeons and that there is no reason to suppose that pit digging was imune from cult thinking or that it was an entirely secular obsession. just wish we could find some waterlogged examples. anybody?
The patchy and uneven spread of anything is usually a result of the patchy and uneven spread of the right kind of archaeological investigation. Or the patchy and uneven spread of destruction.
But of course I agree that pit digging shouldn't be considered entirely functional/secular and unrelated to ritual thinking.......
Waterlogged neolithic pits would be the holy grail! Though I doubt it would end the discussion/argument. One persons chewed and thrown away chicken leg is the end of a meal...another's is a sacrifice to the great chicken god Cluck the Mighty. The only way to be sure would be to ask the person that deposited it. But of course using a polygraph to make sure they weren't lying.
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Jack Wrote:The patchy and uneven spread of anything is usually a result of the patchy and uneven spread of the right kind of archaeological investigation. Or the patchy and uneven spread of destruction.
i was referring to causewayed camps and henges - hope you are not?
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers
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Quote:One persons chewed and thrown away chicken leg is the end of a meal...another's is a sacrifice to the great chicken god Cluck the Mighty.
A chewed chicken leg in a Neolithic pit would certainly be worth having!
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So if as various Government agencies are saying only 19.5percent of the land in Britain is built on dropping to around 5 percent or less if you factor out gardens parks allotments etc and most recent archaeology has been in advance of development. Even if you factor out terrain etc the sample size we are dealing with for "pits" is probably a very tiny fraction of the whole that once existed. Surely this makes any attempt to interpret almost a non starter and what we are really looking at is the distribution of archaeological investigation and the methodologies of the archaeologists involved.
PS has anyone else noticed a worrying recent trend in the media to play up just how undeveloped this country is. Does anyone suspect a Govenment agenda to move development on to green field sites? Not a bad thing for archaeology as long as archaeology is factored in (one can dream
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Could get all the unemployed out with shovels, start at Lands End and topsoil strip Britain northwards looking for them all? [going around the Scheduled sites, obviously] Or would all the Scottish prehistorians die of suspense
