12th August 2010, 05:40 PM
Some good points there, although I'd point out that some relatively small companies can still get and do large/very large projects, that's what the mobile workforce are for!
You're definitely right about 'outside' organisations trashing (often unwittingly) archaeology that the locals are fully aware is there, I've been the victim of that a number of times. On a slightly different point, the company I work for recently did a big road scheme where there had previously been trial trenching by several 'outside' organisations, many of which, due to unfamiliarity with the sh*** variety of naturals we get around here, had frequently either not-bottomed the archaeology (in one case by over a metre of stratified settlement deposits) or had just machined straight through the archaeology and missed the lot. The one batch done by a 'local' unit were all spot-on....
You're definitely right about 'outside' organisations trashing (often unwittingly) archaeology that the locals are fully aware is there, I've been the victim of that a number of times. On a slightly different point, the company I work for recently did a big road scheme where there had previously been trial trenching by several 'outside' organisations, many of which, due to unfamiliarity with the sh*** variety of naturals we get around here, had frequently either not-bottomed the archaeology (in one case by over a metre of stratified settlement deposits) or had just machined straight through the archaeology and missed the lot. The one batch done by a 'local' unit were all spot-on....