29th June 2012, 04:47 PM
Wax Wrote:So does the soil and rock types the pits are cut into dictate the level of preservation and identification in the record? I know some who cannot spot features unless cut into a natural, or soil very different from the fill.
Am currently writing up a project where probably the distribution of pits through time would have been of interest, but utterly undermined by the fieldwork having been done over 20 years by a variety of units using different methodologies etc, and its quite obvious that several of the 'away' units had no idea what they were doing on different subsoils/natural to what they were used to so can't trust any of their 'negative' results anyway - eg. it shouldn't be possible to not notice 1.5m of stratified Roman settlement?.....a small neolithic pit doesn't stand a chance! Have also found references on monitoring paperwork to pits not being recorded cos they didn't have any finds...errrr, not very helpful when most of the ones I'm interested in don't anyway.....and without adequate records its hard to tell whether a lot of the 'natural' features were or not....and then of course there's the nasty habit a lot of people have of machining trial trenches down to 'clean' natural - those'll be the big blank rectangles in the middle of all the surrounding archaeology making up the 'dirty' bit just a bit higher up........ :face-crying: