25th February 2012, 05:03 PM
(This post was last modified: 25th February 2012, 05:05 PM by Dinosaur.)
gwyl Wrote:i've dealt with legacy sites and dead archives and it is apparent that the level of quality of work is constantly subject to external constraints, be it skills or funding or interest in the site.
Good comment. I also seem to spend a lot of time dealing with old stuff, much of which is at least as good as most modern product. The more youthful end of the profession seem to have had it drummed into them at some point in Uni that modern excavation is somehow better than in the 'bad old days' - actually from what I've witnessed over the last 30 years or so standards have plummetted, largely, as you point out, because no one has the time to do anything properly any more. Unfortunately this seems to include basics like learning to dig. There's a culture these days that a good digger is one who produces a neat-looking half-sectioned posthole (whether it's right or not), takes a really bad and unuseable photo, does some rather average drawings, fills in the context sheet neatlly and in all the boxes (whether what's written is garbage or not) and gets onto the next one before tea-break. Sadly a chimp can do that (and probably with a similar number of paw-prints all over the archive). Had first-hand experience of this last year on a tricky gravel site where it was rapidly abundantly clear that most of the (on paper) highly experienced workforce had absolutely no idea what they were doing digging stuff that didn't have nice soily fills. No one was even prepared to touch some of the gravel-filled features! The only people on site who had the faintest were, with one exception (Rich, you're a star), all of the 40-something (ok, 50-something) pre-commercial generation. Makes you weep....