12th December 2011, 08:14 PM
I would clarify that yes, I would expect contractors to set themselves high standards of accuracy and presentation as part of their commitment to professionalism, and I also believe that their clients or clients' consultants would be entitled to query a report which was poorly edited. I do not believe that this extends to the curators and the planning process - the report is a planning tool and as long as it provides a valid summary of the archaeological resource then that is enough, warts and all.
Incidentally it should be remembered that grey literature reports used to be much lighter on the detailed data, but curators raised the bar by requesting the inclusion of full content catalogues and stratigraphic accounts so they could check the validity of the conclusions. This seemed like madness at the time, and even more so now, when any field evaluation's entire site records could be included as databases on a flash drive in the back of a report.
Incidentally it should be remembered that grey literature reports used to be much lighter on the detailed data, but curators raised the bar by requesting the inclusion of full content catalogues and stratigraphic accounts so they could check the validity of the conclusions. This seemed like madness at the time, and even more so now, when any field evaluation's entire site records could be included as databases on a flash drive in the back of a report.