30th April 2010, 08:57 AM
trainedchimp Wrote:Shurely Shome Mishtake - that should read 'when I write a DBA it's to assess the significance of the archaeological resource, understand the likely effects of the development and determine whether further evaluation is required' rather than 'justify doing an evaluation'.
Theoretically, the need to establish 'significance' would make it impossible for a curator to accept a sausage machine DBA without a decent amount of synthesis and discussion of, er, well, significance...
From a commercial archaeology contractor's point of view, when writing a DBA it's surely better to ham-up the likelihood of the presence of archaeology (albeit some sites are a lost cause) in order to generate the potential for further investigation on the ground, be it trenching, geophysics, survey, fieldwalking, GI monitoring or whatever, so yes, wider research is always desirable and often produces wierd results. It's then for the curator to rein-in the archaeological contractor's enthusiasm, if they can be bothered...
People who routinely produce sausage-machine DBAs saying 'there's nothing known within 500m of the site so no need for further evaluation' should be taken out and shot (no, no, no, sorry, given a stern talking to!) for the good of the rest of us trying to make a living, it's quite often those sites that produce the unexpected exciting stuff
!