27th April 2012, 12:12 PM
Dinosaur Wrote:Long and sometimes bitter experience with research designs in relation to sampling strategies suggests that they often (usually!) turn out to have relevence only within the confines of the original trial trench(s) upon which they're based (spot someone gradually becoming disillusioned with trial trenching as a form of evaluation on many projects)....and by the time the 'advisor' can find a free time slot you've usually had to have dug most of the site anyway. Generally manage to come up with some decent sample results anyway off my own bat, luckily, making it up as I go along, just need to know what you're doing :face-approve:
Yep, flexibility is always very important as things on site have a habit of turning into something other than the preliminary works said it was. I've seen concentrations of pits full of nearly unique bronze age pal-env evidence turn up in areas of 'no or little archaeology'; iron age/ Roman period settlement associated pits turn into a landscape of neolithic to bronze age activity etc etc.
The key is keep the soil until you know whats going on..............once its on a spoil heap the evidence is contaminated and destroyed. You can always chuck the sample if it turns out to be useless.
Sample every feature, try and keep sample sizes the same and equally spread over areas of intense (for distribution-based stuff later), try and take an equal number of samples from different phases of activity (if you can) for chronological changes in activity..................but also important is to review your samples and chuck away stuff thats no use before you spend loads sending it off to an office/ specialist for floatation.
Don't get me started on rubbish and inappropriate use of geophysics, fieldwalking, DBA and trial trenching to 'define to limit of the archaeology' before the topsoil is stripped and how much get missed in areas released to construction as a result.
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