25th August 2013, 04:02 PM
archaeologyexile Wrote:In Scotland 70% of all interventions have negative results and of the positive results half are not worth it.....this is far too much! lets do less but do it better!Where would you know *not* to do the archaeology in advance of doing it? Watching briefs (largely?) happen because nobody's 100% sure what is/isn't there. If you decide to only carry out an intervention where you know for sure that there's something of archaeological value, then plenty of relevant stuff will end up being JCB'd into landfill. That 30% of positive results might become 90%, but that 90% could consist of 10 sites instead of 100.
On the other hand, nobody will miss it because nobody ever knew about it. Which I'm sure is the sort of developer logic already in operation in some quarters.
No easy answers, for sure.