31st May 2004, 02:02 PM
Surely the point about asking for planning conditions that require watching briefs or evaluation is not only to ensure that known archaeology is protected, but also to find new archaeology. Any SMR contains only records that relate to sites that are already known, and can never be a difinitive record of all archaeology in a given area. By asking for evaluation of, for example, greenfield developments where there is no previously recorded archaeology, the curator is therefore taking the chance to enhance the archaeological record. Sometimes this pays off spectacularly, more often it returns a negative result, but without suchspeculation sites would be lost without record.