4th January 2013, 11:47 PM
It's worth noting that when DBAs first appeared they were called desk-top studies, using a term imported from architecture for the sort of quick thing you put together without leaving the office. The idea was that a relatively simple and noncontroversial statement of the known archaeological resource, extracted from a reliable source, would then be used to advise developers at an early stage which bits of their proposals might be problematic before the design became fixed. Through a combination of the undeveloped nature of HER information (you might have thought after 30 years that anything notable shown on APs, OS and tithe maps would have been spotted and recorded in the HER), and the failure of developers to think about archaeology until they are preparing to submit a planning application, the DBA has become a research project in its own right with little influence on design.
One of the side effects of statutory status fro HERs, had it happened, could well have been that the HER became the definitive definition of known sites, and therefore restored the desk-top to its original scope (and the unsought consequence of the failure to mitigate effects on other sites).
One of the side effects of statutory status fro HERs, had it happened, could well have been that the HER became the definitive definition of known sites, and therefore restored the desk-top to its original scope (and the unsought consequence of the failure to mitigate effects on other sites).