16th October 2012, 12:51 PM
During an evaluation we always leave burrials in situ. Just expose enough to prove it is a burrial. Remember that an evaluation is not an excavation, its role is to evaluate the archaeological remains so that our friends at the council can decide on the next phase of archaeology, ie excavation and/or watching brief. Excavations and watching briefs we remove boidies or parts thereof.
There is a great temptation to treat evals as mini excavations, but on the whole they are only a way of evaluating the remains, like DBAs, geophys or field walking. Likewise the last thing you want in the resulting excavation are slots dug through structures, kilns, inhumations etc in the eval phase, that look terrible in the excav phase drawings and photos. Also the quality of archaeological surveying can be somewhat variable without good GPS and dedicated surveyors, so locating your trenches during the excavation phase can be problematical, especially if the two phases of work were done by different units, or even different POs in the same unit!
There is a great temptation to treat evals as mini excavations, but on the whole they are only a way of evaluating the remains, like DBAs, geophys or field walking. Likewise the last thing you want in the resulting excavation are slots dug through structures, kilns, inhumations etc in the eval phase, that look terrible in the excav phase drawings and photos. Also the quality of archaeological surveying can be somewhat variable without good GPS and dedicated surveyors, so locating your trenches during the excavation phase can be problematical, especially if the two phases of work were done by different units, or even different POs in the same unit!