9th July 2008, 01:42 PM
What a load of tosh.
The first five minutes:
No brief, no specification, no WSI, no risk assessment, no county archaeologist for that matter, no PPE, no health and safety, unshored trenches, no recording, pulling things out of the ground in a most un-archaeological fashion, no apparent stratigraphy, a tent (!) instead of a portacabin, ability to instantly identify 'damascene steel' by eye from a (presumably corroded) fragment of ferrous material...
The next five minutes:
Unbelievably lavish post-ex facilities, survival of WOOD and METAL and FABRIC in the same context (???), team members' ability to do dendro AND fabric AND metal conservation ALL AT THE SAME TIME, instantaneous C14 results (from where? by fax in the middle of the night?)...
And then it went on and on and on, until the final denoument which was utterly absurd. If I know anything about dovecotes in Herefordshire it is that the vast caverns beneath them which contain holy crosses are usually damp. Like eggbasket, if felt that:
Even as drama it was pretty awful. All of the characters were flat and wooden. The only redeeming feature was the character of Professor 'Dolly' Parton, who reminded me of a university archaeologist from a city near to Bath. This programme has set back the public face of archaeology for another 15 years.
The first five minutes:
No brief, no specification, no WSI, no risk assessment, no county archaeologist for that matter, no PPE, no health and safety, unshored trenches, no recording, pulling things out of the ground in a most un-archaeological fashion, no apparent stratigraphy, a tent (!) instead of a portacabin, ability to instantly identify 'damascene steel' by eye from a (presumably corroded) fragment of ferrous material...
The next five minutes:
Unbelievably lavish post-ex facilities, survival of WOOD and METAL and FABRIC in the same context (???), team members' ability to do dendro AND fabric AND metal conservation ALL AT THE SAME TIME, instantaneous C14 results (from where? by fax in the middle of the night?)...
And then it went on and on and on, until the final denoument which was utterly absurd. If I know anything about dovecotes in Herefordshire it is that the vast caverns beneath them which contain holy crosses are usually damp. Like eggbasket, if felt that:
Quote:quote:It was like a car crash. I could not tear my eyes away even as I wished to tear them out. Why else did I watch it to the end?
Even as drama it was pretty awful. All of the characters were flat and wooden. The only redeeming feature was the character of Professor 'Dolly' Parton, who reminded me of a university archaeologist from a city near to Bath. This programme has set back the public face of archaeology for another 15 years.