Thornborough "debate"

[Paul Barford]

quote:Originally posted by garybrun

quote: It is clear that if archaeological deposits are present within this area of Ladybridge Farm then they are not in a static state of preservation but are continuing to be eroded and lost without record.

Is this a good argument for bringing in the metal detectorists to help out??

Can a metal detectorist record those [u]archaeological deposits </u>from under an opaque level of ploughsoil before they are plouged, or merely recover the metallic component of the debris afterwards? Anyway, at the least if you were only just going for the artefacts, what a "detectorist" would need to do the job properly on this (primarily Neolithic) site would be non-existant 'potsherd detectors' and 'struck flint detectors'. But then, as we keep saying, its not the artefacts alone that is the important thing, but in their context, as is expressed in the Second Aim of the Portable Antiquities Scheme (though Ido not see UKDFD making any reference to it).

Surely the whole point of preservation in situ is to aim for that "static state of preservation" and not merely leave the site to deteriorate or be damaged by increments and merely practice salvage-style reaction to the results. I think the Nosterfield experiments are an interesting contribution to the debate and look forward to more work of this type being done and published as part of trying to work out what to do about situations like this.

Paul Barford