Is the NVQ worth it?

[kevin wooldridge]

I hear what your saying, but the only way to know if the data is any good is to go back and find sites with the survey data. Anyone can survey you only get found out when you test the data which maybe several years later and your long gone. The 1200s with GPS may reduce this issue but how many people are using these machines.

I think there are many ways of knowing whether the data is 'any good', but on your specific point most archaeological contractors that I know both in the UK and abroad that use total stations such as Leica locate their sites to national survey grids or the World Geodetic System (WGS) so physically returning to the location of a site (in many case the archaeological remains would have been removed) is not diffficult. Finding the digital evidence of any site is slightly more daunting, for whilst I am sure the integrity of the original and processed data is fine, finding online facilities where that data can be accessed is still hit and miss. For all kinds of reasons mostly outside of the control of the archaeologists who collected and processed the original data....

How many archaeologists are using machines equal to the task.....well certainly all archaeologists in Norway (where I work) and in Sweden and all of the major UK archaeological contractors. I have seen the instruments in use by archaeologists in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Spain and France. The Swedish antiquities service (responsible for the Intrasis programme and which relies on digital data capture) tell me that it is used by archaeologists in Hungary and Iceland. And I have colleagues who use the equipment on projects in Turkey, Greece and the Middle East and the Caucases. I have used similar equipment in the USA and in Qatar. And as David mentioned he has used simialr equipment in Jordan and Croatia.... And of course it is used by Time Team!! To answer the question....I would say a fair number of archaeologists.