29th May 2013, 12:38 PM
Yep. There is definitely a market for say, a small group of people to run a company that undercuts the sensible tenders then miraculously fails to find most of or any of the archaeology on a site to come in on or under budget.
Its easy, you just employ inexperienced archaeologists as your project officers, pressure them on the time they have to finish and ignore the difficult to see features cut into the clay, write off early prehistoric pits as tree boles, lose entire sites under a watching brief, that whole are will be preserved cos the footings are over here, trench goes through here and they definitely wont track over it or rip the area......etc etc
'I didn't see any medieval farm/ village during the watching brief'
'Really? So how was the area stripped?'
'With several bulldozers of course.'
Though like the murphys, i'm not bitter
Its easy, you just employ inexperienced archaeologists as your project officers, pressure them on the time they have to finish and ignore the difficult to see features cut into the clay, write off early prehistoric pits as tree boles, lose entire sites under a watching brief, that whole are will be preserved cos the footings are over here, trench goes through here and they definitely wont track over it or rip the area......etc etc
'I didn't see any medieval farm/ village during the watching brief'
'Really? So how was the area stripped?'
'With several bulldozers of course.'
Though like the murphys, i'm not bitter