5th August 2011, 08:56 AM
Yeah, strange days indeed. I also agree with you (for once!) oh Gnomey one.
It does lead me onto a personal gripe of mine with this 'factory' style approach to archaeology epitomised by these posts. In my view there should be no need for 'post-excavation' POs or 'DBA' POs as these two tasks should just be carried out by properly rounded POs whose time and responsibilities are divided between office and site (and HER, library, record office etc). In my experience such an approach (which is not incompatible with commercial archaeology) leads to better archaeologists and a better end product - as the best person to assess a site is the person who is about to excavate / trial trench it. Similarly the best person to write up a site is the person who has just spent, days, weeks or months excavating it. Not, in both cases some poor sucker who rarely gets to see daylight. Call me a crank, if you like (many do), but that for me is an approach which ticks all the boxes and also makes for happy (or at least happier) archaeologists. It's certainly something to aspire to. And not unknown even today.[/QUOTE]
Again, I could not agree more. Compartmentalizing the job is not what should have happened. I work in a system where the archaeologist running the site, does so from start to finish, and personally writes most of the report - excluding specialist input obviously. Why on earth this should lead us to falsify data (if I understood that post correctly - I do not know). My experience has made me wonder - and i say only wonder - how many sites in britain are written up without a true full knowledge of the archaeology. Records are wonderful things, but do not, I think - actually - replace having been there yourself, seen all those relationships, taken all those decisions - understood the site on a daily basis.
It does lead me onto a personal gripe of mine with this 'factory' style approach to archaeology epitomised by these posts. In my view there should be no need for 'post-excavation' POs or 'DBA' POs as these two tasks should just be carried out by properly rounded POs whose time and responsibilities are divided between office and site (and HER, library, record office etc). In my experience such an approach (which is not incompatible with commercial archaeology) leads to better archaeologists and a better end product - as the best person to assess a site is the person who is about to excavate / trial trench it. Similarly the best person to write up a site is the person who has just spent, days, weeks or months excavating it. Not, in both cases some poor sucker who rarely gets to see daylight. Call me a crank, if you like (many do), but that for me is an approach which ticks all the boxes and also makes for happy (or at least happier) archaeologists. It's certainly something to aspire to. And not unknown even today.[/QUOTE]
Again, I could not agree more. Compartmentalizing the job is not what should have happened. I work in a system where the archaeologist running the site, does so from start to finish, and personally writes most of the report - excluding specialist input obviously. Why on earth this should lead us to falsify data (if I understood that post correctly - I do not know). My experience has made me wonder - and i say only wonder - how many sites in britain are written up without a true full knowledge of the archaeology. Records are wonderful things, but do not, I think - actually - replace having been there yourself, seen all those relationships, taken all those decisions - understood the site on a daily basis.