9th July 2005, 09:11 PM
Right, where was I? I've been around for a while and in all that time I've only ever worked for one unit who used a metal detector to scan for finds in the topsoil before breaking out trenches with a machine. Last year working for a large unit on a pagan Anglo-Saxon cemetery there were serious concerns raised about night-hawks. I asked why we didn't just scan the site first with our MD and the reply was, "We haven't got one, we were thinking about getting one but we didn't get round to it." So the only solution was to seed the site as it was all on glacial till and cut features were not obviously apparent. MDs could be used a lot more effectively if the person wielding them was an archaeologist who knows about finds (including non-metallics), stratigraphy, recording and how to dig a sondage (a TST wouldn't go amiss either). If we can do a geophysical survey surely we can manage a MD survey?
P.S. It's good to be back.
P.S. It's good to be back.