Research in commercial archaeology

[1man1desk]

Posted by Paul Belford:

quote:I use the word research deliberately.

For, regardless of how it is paid for, or under what circumstances it comes about, we must remember that all archaeological work is research.

Within the 'profit' thread, Paul Belford has kicked off a new discussion about the place of research in commercial archaeology. It is a bit off-topic in the profit thread, but I think it is an important topic for discussion, so here goes.

Developers are obliged to pay for two things under either the planning or EIA systems (the same applies in all environmental fields):

1 - Enough preliminary investigation to identify and define any impacts they will cause (that's your DBA and evaluation, in archaeology);

2 - Works to avoid, reduce or mitigate for the impacts they will cause (that's your 'preservation in situ' or 'by record', in archaeology).

They are explicitly not required to fund research, which could be defined (for this purpose only) as 'work that the archaeologists would like to do out of academic interest, but that is not required to avoid, reduce or mitigate any impact that would be caused by the development'.

That does not mean that research is not an important concept in commercial archaeology. You could define the archaeological impact of development as follows:

'Damage to physical evidence of the past that would otherwise be available for future archaeological research, or for the enjoyment of their heritage by members of the public'.

You cannot therefore define the significance of an impact unless you first understand the potential importance of the affected remains for research. An understanding of research issues is therefore crucial at DBA and evaluation stage, and in designing and reporting on your mitigation works.

The point, therefore, of your 'preservation by record' operation is not to do research, but to replace physical evidence in the ground with a record of that evidence, making sure that it remains available to future researchers. You cannot plan the collection of the data, the content and structure of the archive or the content and structure of your report unless you know what it means in relation to possible future research.



1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[gonetopot]

While your definitions are certainly spot on, I haven't come across a single county archaeologist (in East Anglia) who would accept that as a bare minimum. Every Research Archive Report/Publication report would simply be sent back asking for you to do more in depth research on comparisons and the wider context of the archaeology. And I have to say I'm glad because even in the 'developer pays' world I like to think that the role of archaeologists isn't just to provide a glorified 'past and present' landscape catalogue rather than greater understanding. No matter what the planning guideline explicitly define.

Obviously there are limits to how much research is appropriate which is where experienced managers come in (as some people definitely get carried away with specific agendas). The question should surely be: how much research is appropriate? and that will always be project specific.

[kevin wooldridge]

Not meaning to be pedantic One Man One Desk, but where under the planning system or EIA does it explicitly state that funders are not required to fund research? Surely nothing is mentioned about archaeological research one way or t'other.

I have worked on plenty of commercial projects where a requirement of the planning permission has been that developers fund post-site work to a level that would enable publication of the results of the work. By implication that requires research on both the primary data and its 'context' be it local, regional, national or international.

[1man1desk]

Posted by Gontopot:

quote:While your definitions are certainly spot on, I haven't come across a single county archaeologist (in East Anglia) who would accept that as a bare minimum. Every Research Archive Report/Publication report would simply be sent back asking for you to do more in depth research on comparisons and the wider context of the archaeology. And I have to say I'm glad because even in the 'developer pays' world I like to think that the role of archaeologists isn't just to provide a glorified 'past and present' landscape catalogue rather than greater understanding. No matter what the planning guideline explicitly define.

I don't disagree with you at all; I would certainly expect a full academic report too. The point of my post was not to define the scope of work you do, but what the work is ultimately for.

What you refer to as 'in-depth research on comparisons and the wider context' is what I would call essential background reading; my distinction between mitigation and research was really more related to the scope of the fieldwork. I'll give an example, based on a real case some years old.

An infrastructure project was going to remove part of a bog. We commissioned evaluation in the form of palaeoenvironmental coring which identified the depth and profile of the bog and, through a preliminary level of analysis, showed that it had really good palynological preservation covering the period from the immediate post-glacial up to the medieval.

The proposal from the archaeological contractor (a uni-based specialist wetlands unit) was to do a very detailed analysis of the whole 21m depth of cores taken from the deepest, central point in the bog. This would be a really worth-while bit of research, but was going to be pretty expensive.

The impact was going to be the physical removal of a peripheral part of the bog, with a worst-case risk that the water table might drop by a maximum of 0.75m (the likely case was that the water table would not change). The central part of the bog would not be affected, and therefore there was unlikely to be any loss of palaeoenvironmental information.

We put forward a mitigation proposal on the basis of a worst-case scenario, which was agreed without hesitation by both EH and the local curator and designed with the assistance of the Regional Scientific Advisor. The proposal was to do a detailed analysis of the top 1.5m of the core (double the worst-case impact depth), do a full academic publication of that analysis, and leave the rest alone.

We could not justify analysing the full depth, although we would have liked to, because not only was there no predicted impact but there was no risk of an impact. Any works below that depth would therefore constitute 'research' rather than 'mitigation', in the sense that I defined them at the start of this thread.

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[gonetopot]

Point taken. My apologies if that came over as a bit of a rant (having re-read it,it did!). But this afternoon I am working on seperate projects that require, contrastingly, a huge level of research on one and demand absolutely none on the other and actually require something inbetween for both. I think your thred is an incredibly valid one that highlights the fact that while there has been a constant demand for higher or consistent standards in field archaeology, the realm of post-ex remains hugely varied (at least between the units I have worked for).

In defining what we work for, I think (putting tin helmet on) that it must always and vaguely be for the expansion of our understanding of archaeology, whether it was funded by government (in the past) or by developers (now). Just because the developers want a 'minimum' requirement, it doesnt mean we should pander to it otherwise we have surrendered everything the 'Rescue' generation campaigned for: ie. suitable provision, NOT minimum which is wht developer funding and tendering may be driving us towards (another question, another rant, I know - I shall add body armour to the tin hat)

Have a good weekend y'all

[1man1desk]

Posted by Gonetopot:

quote:In defining what we work for, I think (putting tin helmet on) that it must always and vaguely be for the expansion of our understanding of archaeology, whether it was funded by government (in the past) or by developers (now). Just because the developers want a 'minimum' requirement, it doesnt mean we should pander to it

That's true, but it is also true that we must not go too far.

There is a moral argument for saying that we can only justify asking developers to pay for work that is required because of what they are going to do - ie, they must pay for mitigating the damage they will cause.

We do have our own academic objectives as archaeologists, but if the work we want to do for that purpose goes beyond what we can justifiably ask the developer to pay for then it is up to us to find other sources of funding. It is not sufficient to say 'there aren't any, so the developer has to pay' - why should they?

Getting completely away from the moral argument onto a pragmatic one - whatever the developers should pay for, the only reason we can make them pay for anything is because of a mandate given through planning law and policy. If we try to push the boundaries of what is covered by that policy beyond what was intended by it in one direction, we undermine the credibility of the whole system and can hardly blame them for trying to push in the other direction. Forcing developers to pay for archaeological work over and above the mitigation of the impacts they cause is pushing in exactly that way.

What we can legitimately do is push for changes in law and/or policy, but that is only likely to be successful if we can convince non-archaeologists in political positions that our case is reasonable.

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[diggingthedirt]

quote:Originally posted by 1man1desk
There is a moral argument for saying that we can only justify asking developers to pay for work that is required because of what they are going to do - ie, they must pay for mitigating the damage they will cause.

The path of the righteous archaeologist is beset on all sides by the selfishness of developers and the tyranny of evil consultants (Ezekiel 25:17). Amen.

[gonetopot]

"I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my archaeologists"

If only.Sigh.

1man1desk, you are right - but even under such oppresive contractual standards we must strive to maintain an appropriate level of research as we work. Hopefully if this is controlled by post-ex managers in the right way, developers will see the the benfit of greater understanding. Some do, many don't but thats the way. It is important that any research attached to a project is appropriate to the recorded archaeology and not indulgent to the archaeologist (who may want to see a wider picture or pursue a particular agenda). If this can be achieved then many developers will accept it as part of a project as according to the scale of the whole project it will not appear in any way excessive.

[Silent Bob]

The way commercial archaeology is designed means that research questions are generally not being answered. That is not to say that many large archaeological excavations will not provide useful results which will help at least occasionally, perhaps on a regional or national level. However, if you were for example working on a site in a medieval borough then a simple thing such as recording the widths of the burgage plots could be very useful for anyone studying the growth of that particlar town. However, if your site boundary lies two metres from said burgage plots, tough, question remains unanswered. Also, ask yourself how many times you have done a watching brief to the rear of a medieval street frontage rather than an evaluation or open area.

I recently attended the series of lectures at Rewley House on desertion and decline in later medieval towns. It didn't take long to realise that the missing ingredient in the lectures was generally excavation. Theories were not being tested, evidence not being gathered. It is quite easy to read a book from the early 1980s and find that the lack of evidence from excavation mentioned back then, for example on the growth of Saxon burghs, remains almost entirely the same.

I just spent the day on a large site within a medeival town. A crappy small service trench was being excavated across the probable line of the town ditch, through which a proper section(in which all layers were recorded) has never been dug. I found the one edge of said ditch and a large expanse of fill. I was quite pleased, showing my low level of expectations in this job. However, that was it and the trench was filled in after a whole 30 minutes. No one had thought to make it a condition of the large development that a proper archaeologcial trench should be excavated across the ditch because it was on part of the site where not a lot of ground disturbance was to happen and was not a necessary part of the development. But hey, it was only one of the very few places in the whole town where the ditch hasn't been built over. In my experience this is relatively typical and it is rare for a feature to be looked for or excavated 'because it's there'.

[chiz]

Your comments re burghs surely have a lot to with the nature of the settlements now on those sites? There aren't a huge amount of opportunities to investigate these towns archaeologically, and the type of developer who does those sites is often small. There should be research frameworks and strategies in place at a local and regional level to address the issue you raised, but its really down to the balance between the presumption of preservation in situ meaning we don't get to dig the whole site (which we would all like), but also meaning we do get to dig what will be destroyed. In the case of your ditch, you recorded what was destroyed by the service trench, the rest of the ditch there is preserved in situ. The probable line is now the very probable line, and you hopefully have some dating from the upper infilling. That is an advance. Obviously digging a slot through the whole ditch would be 'better', but it destroys the resource and is the last resort. You can argue for it if the development were to take out 1/3 say of the ditch, but a 'crappy small' service trench doesn't warrant that.

I've been in similar situations where we were only allowed to excavate the eastern end of a church, leaving us in the position of not having a full understanding of the evolution of the church, but it was a SAM and the western part was not going to be trashed. We did a professional job and the records can be tied together in the future. On another site we only dug the pile-caps, and the rest of the site was preserved, leaving us with a fragmented view of the site, but its the price we pay. In the same way as doing 6 month watching briefs on empty pipelines is the price we pay. We can't always have it our way, unfortunately. It is really frustrating but I think we're lucky to get to do anything sometimes.

Generally where I work there is a huge commitment to research from the largest units, and that is enforced by the curators, as well as many consultants being on side. If you show a need to bring in other sites or analyse material above and beyond the norm then clients will come round if that is what happens normally. Maybe that is the type of site I have worked on, and it maybe isn't the case for really small developers, but it is my experience. I work in an area (London), where there is a research framework, a research strategy is being written as we speak, and world class academic research is done on sites. Its done by pushing up standards so (nearly) all the units now have to do a proper job here. Hopefully other areas will follow. To me its a lot about attitude, and if you have the frameworks saying research is important, you can successfully argue for proper dissemination of the results as being part of the condition.
What doesn't work as well though is the area of finds and enviro research, as they need a wider overview in many cases. There are problems with getting a city wide analytical programme of eg the Roman animal bone, or medieval environment. But by tapping into external funding sources projects doing this type of work does happen.

Overview projects are a problem but I feel as a professional 'commmercial' archaeologist my job is to excavate the site impeccably, and to produce an archive which can be used in the future by researchers, but also to assess and analyse the site results to a certain level so that the real specialists in any area or discipline can access the data easily and take on the baton of research to the wider and higher level. No commercial site will fund endless research, but it will fund the research necessary to set out the site at a level where it is accessible for others to use.