18th July 2013, 10:31 PM
Unitof1 Wrote:medieval abbeys tend to be insider public servant grant jobs or watching some drain run for a bog, which one you being doing. Stone drawing is a load of tosh, apart from it being part of the total ripoff that is building recording a subset of the history of art, you have the problem that each stone was probably laid one after another and should you work that out and then you have the problem of stones being inserted. Yes you can stand around drawing each one and thinking that your intimate association will lead to an enlightened phasing of it all in the end, if not by you but by somebody else or you could just say this phase that phase this phase, out line them as contexts give an excuse why you think that they are then give some description to each context and hopefully not have to draw a single stone. In Jacks world if you don't draw every stone presumably using a plumb line and grid and then taken a photo you are not an archaeologist, this unit culture has then been further cannibalised into Kevs world of total stations and photorectifcation where the methodology supersedes interpretation. It seems to me that archaeologists record their interpretation and should do so using what ever method they think appropriate. The curators/ like to chuck the phrase and justification " preservation by record " but they don't like remind everybody that that record is about an interpretation. Preservation by interpretation. Not do a half section because that is whats in the wsi and then it must have a picture even if that picture doesn't show anything. As an archive its not sustainable and can only lead to global warming and we don't want that do we.
Wow - Buildings archaeologists, Art historians, Surveyors, Curators, and folks who follow the rules - did you leave anyone out? That's quite a tranche of the profession to insult in only one paragraph!
We need to exert ourselves with good drawings, decent photos, and lucid context sheets precisely because we destroy the very evidence we seek. To wilfully do less would be somewhere between negligent and criminal. It doesn't exactly mean we need to draw every single stone, nor photograph every single feature, but anything we DON'T record may as well never have existed. So, more recording is always better for researchers than less.
As for the financial implications, that's what a well-costed tender is all about!