26th May 2005, 05:48 PM
Whoo! Bloody hell! Well said, mercenary!
For the record your experiences sound quite similar to my own, in the south. All too often it isn't that the monitoring is toothless, more misguided,and sometimes I feel a little sorry for these characters. However, on other occasions when their only real input into a project is to 'nitpick' at grammar, spelling etc. rather than archaeological content and to pompously declare that they and only they are to make any recommendations for further work, I despair. Similarly the reluctance of curatorial bodies to become RAOs leads to the strange contradiction of unregistered entities reccomending that the best people for the job are RAOs when they themselves are not.
The use of watching brief conditions is, or should be, a major bone of contention. One argument goes that if the curator suspects that there may be significant archaeology present on a site then it should be evaluated. This seems to hold sway in some counties where WBs are a rarity. All too often WBs and the conditions which they are undertaken are of little archaeological value, their only purpose seeming to be to fill the gap between the sites a curator feels merit no response and those that need trenching. However, in some circumstances a 'strip and record' WB may provide a cost effective and archaeologically meaningful alternative e.g. pipeline easements, small extensions. In my position it is often difficult to justify the endless negative WBs undertaken at the whim of curators who feel unable to jsutify trenching and yet demands some sort of response. The clients unfortunately just regard these individuals as wasting their time and money, and I for one find it increasingly difficult to defend their decisions.
'Preservation in situ' in the case of piling seems to be common outside of London and given the evident damage that this practice results in I'm always amazed by this. However, this is something for the curators to crack down on presumably.
Peter Wardle's comments: Are ludicrously developer orientated (as one would expect from a consultant running dog!). Although the end purpose of evaluations is clearly connected with the planning process this is not reason to totally divorce developer led projects from their wider archaeological context. There are such things as Research Agendas (I'm sure you've heard of these, Peter). But (as I pointed out earlier) if you want to view these exercises from a purely client based perspective, you should bear in mind the fact that "clients often don't see the relevance of (and resent paying for) full reports where nothing has been found. Hoever, negative results can be as valuable as results showing archaeological features are present. It is not acceptable simply to state that archaeological remains were not found. Negative results are still important as they indicate the development area may be beyond site limits"
For the record your experiences sound quite similar to my own, in the south. All too often it isn't that the monitoring is toothless, more misguided,and sometimes I feel a little sorry for these characters. However, on other occasions when their only real input into a project is to 'nitpick' at grammar, spelling etc. rather than archaeological content and to pompously declare that they and only they are to make any recommendations for further work, I despair. Similarly the reluctance of curatorial bodies to become RAOs leads to the strange contradiction of unregistered entities reccomending that the best people for the job are RAOs when they themselves are not.
The use of watching brief conditions is, or should be, a major bone of contention. One argument goes that if the curator suspects that there may be significant archaeology present on a site then it should be evaluated. This seems to hold sway in some counties where WBs are a rarity. All too often WBs and the conditions which they are undertaken are of little archaeological value, their only purpose seeming to be to fill the gap between the sites a curator feels merit no response and those that need trenching. However, in some circumstances a 'strip and record' WB may provide a cost effective and archaeologically meaningful alternative e.g. pipeline easements, small extensions. In my position it is often difficult to justify the endless negative WBs undertaken at the whim of curators who feel unable to jsutify trenching and yet demands some sort of response. The clients unfortunately just regard these individuals as wasting their time and money, and I for one find it increasingly difficult to defend their decisions.
'Preservation in situ' in the case of piling seems to be common outside of London and given the evident damage that this practice results in I'm always amazed by this. However, this is something for the curators to crack down on presumably.
Peter Wardle's comments: Are ludicrously developer orientated (as one would expect from a consultant running dog!). Although the end purpose of evaluations is clearly connected with the planning process this is not reason to totally divorce developer led projects from their wider archaeological context. There are such things as Research Agendas (I'm sure you've heard of these, Peter). But (as I pointed out earlier) if you want to view these exercises from a purely client based perspective, you should bear in mind the fact that "clients often don't see the relevance of (and resent paying for) full reports where nothing has been found. Hoever, negative results can be as valuable as results showing archaeological features are present. It is not acceptable simply to state that archaeological remains were not found. Negative results are still important as they indicate the development area may be beyond site limits"