14th January 2013, 09:05 PM
A lot of what you are describing could be resolved by scanning site plans/AP plots/geofizz interpretations onto a single map base, and see the actual features (for the Catterick example we've got first Ed OS as well, and displayed GoogleEarth so you can see where you are - oh, can switch on the HER plot too) - in an area like that all the 'sites' JOIN UP, you can see how many people have dug bits of the same ditch without realising... It took someone who knew what they were doing a couple of days to figure out where all the bits fitted (some of the survey data's appalling, and not just the older stuff, so quite a lot of 'bodging'), but theres now a plan linking 100+ interventions into a multi-period single archaeological landscape of around 10 sq.km so that I can smugly 'discover' stuff without expending any more effort that fetching coffee re-fills. 
Isn't that the kind of thing HERs should be doing with their data? :face-thinks:
Isn't that the kind of thing HERs should be doing with their data? :face-thinks: