Jack Wrote:Sorry, not got any spare at the moment.
I'd disagree that DBA's are easy simple or should be written by site assistants............someone must be writing very poor DBA's somewhere.
In most respects a DBA is the most important part of the process in commercial archaeology, it is the report that considers the likelyhood of archaeological remains to be impacted by the development, and now, includes an assessment of the visual impact of the development on Heritage assets in the surrounds.
A good DBA includes a statement of the potential impacts and provides a strategy for their mitigation.
To accurately assess the impact you need to understand the regional research frameworks, resource assessments but also need a working knowledge of the region for all those troublesome sites that don't appear on the HER. You need to be able to interpret earthworks, aerial photographs, geophysical surveys, fieldwalking data and to know when these don't provide a good indication of the presence of unrecorded archaeology.
Furthermore, updated project designs and research designs are starting to creep into DBA's.
Hardly the thing you'd expect a site assistant to have the right experience and skills to undertake (not that site assistants can't do it.........just they should be paid the appropriate amount for the work).
BUT, after seeing some of the DBA's produced by some clients - just basic lists from the HER, I'm not surprised.
Shame on anyone encouraging this erosion of standards.}
Sorry Jack, been playing 5-page catch-up so hadn't got to your post, we seem to be thinking the same, could be why we both get paid more than that to write them, and are then at a pay-grade to follow up with all phases of the project through to peer-reviewed publication...which is surely a project officer's role, to deliver a project from inception (DBA) to completion (publication) while being sufficiently experienced and competent to follow all the twists and turns along the way....think its all in the job title really....
