8th July 2010, 12:40 PM
Looks like we're doing our job then. Next time you're in the offices of e.g. a big quarry company try reading all the 'fatal accident' notices they tend to send round and pin up on their notice boards, then you'll get some idea how many people die (often under fairly extreme circumstances) in places like quarries and construction sites....strange, seems to be that most archaeologists spend a lot of their time in places like that....was slightly inconvenienced one day in 1999 by a machine managing to drop a 9m sheet piling on someone's head right outside my portacabin door....amazingly not one of my crew, a passing construction guy instead, although I had to give some of my crew the rest of the day off, all the blood and screaming seems to affect some people that way, and then the police turned up and taped off the cabin anyway so we couldn't get any tools out. Land archaeology in this country has had amazingly few fatalities over the years (and long may it continue), but thats more by luck than design methinks....