Evaluating urban sites

[BAJR]

That is a very good question, and indeed you could say that evals in deep strat do give misleading results. I have one here (pic below) in York, where we dropped in 5 trenches across the site dug everything single context. it gave us a full idea of depth and quality of preservation as well as what to expect... what we did not expect or find in the eval was the buildings, the road, the thousand plus coins arranged around a pillar - the bridge piers, the wooden buildings etc etc................. however, the eval meant you were not going in blind, you had a good idea of depth.. (though once an eval in a castle managed to hit the only bit of bedrock that had a hole 2 m deep! - hence our surprise when we hit the top with a mattock and hit bedrock 25cm down!!) in as much as you can be... we were prepared for organic survival, we knew to expect good Roman and possible Anglian and the rest is history. Eval in deep strat is as valid as elsewhere... I have seen a field full of trenches that manged to miss the archaeology .. (by accident I hope!) round houses and even an 18th C farmhouse.

You have to consider the point of the eval. and never be shocked that the eval does not match the full excavation.... it just prepares you for it