23rd February 2006, 09:30 PM
Quote:quote:You can't tell me that you would not have preferred to have waited until you got the professional analysis back from a dig before deciding whether to go back and do more work or not.
What? Is more evaluation work possible? I thought all were happy that the latest evaluation had answered the questions about the size of the site. How can specialist reports or lack thereof possibly affect a decision like that? Decisions about "going back" are not in the hands of commercial archaeologists, or even in the hands of the consultant archaeologists employing them I suspect. Would it even have made any difference on a research project? I'm not sure, but I doubt it.
Were any of the specialist results surprising? It doesn't look like it. Surprising that they didn't contain more environmental evidence possibly.
They simply confirmed earlier work from which a well though out methodology was employed to deal with the expected archaeology. That's the system working well.
As to whether I agree with the thankless role of archaeology within the planning system.. that's a different question entirely.