29th June 2011, 06:03 PM
Sorry, nearly missed these, not been on for a few days (work) so had moved rather a long way down the thread list... If you've only got limited resources, why not expend them where you might actually learn something? As is the way on road schemes, rather larger resources are available than on most developments, so huge amounts of money get spent on what is often not, in the grander scheme of things, stuff that is going to move archaeology forward in any direction (except possibly another spot on a distribution map on page 398 of the next 'Overview of Roman Archaeology in Britain'). Its all back to the way the overall developer-funded pot of gold for the commercial sector gets expended - an unfortunate side-product of the development/site-specific nature of nearly all modern field archaeology in Britain. Sites which can be intrinsically more informative towards our understanding of the past frequently occur on developments which are relatively poor in funding/resources for archaeology. Nothing against Roman roadside settlements (lots of ditches and finds, and a few dead people, fun digging), although they do seem to result in generally identikit reports. Oh, that A1 site was carefully done to avoid all the good stuff (like the actual settlement/?fort) by re-routing the road, so what was dug was mainly peripheral stuff (that wasn't supposed to be there).....how many 'V'-sectioned enclosure ditches can the literature handle? :face-stir: