11th September 2013, 03:17 PM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:In my defence (and echoing another thread as to what might or might not be defined as archaeology) I would say that any thing buried and of an anthropogenic nature would to my mind count as 'archaeology'.....i.e 'underground storage tanks, buried foundations, old basements, mineshafts, mine adits and deeper workings, .... unexploded bomb or ordnance detection, assessing the condition of roads, soil mapping, locating rebars, bridge inspections, mapping rail ballast variations' confirm my prognosis. I accept that there are geological uses for geophysics, but would say in the main part these are on a macro rather than micro scale needed for specific archaeological use.
Kevin. Quite a broad definition of archaeology there! And not one that would be agreed with by most people outside of archaeology (and possibly not all within?
). But agreed, if relatively modern pipes and cables, reinforced concrete, rail ballast etc are considered archaeology then there aren't many other applications for geophysics. Other than the soil mapping, near-surface bedrock profiling, finding solutions features, etc, etc.Dino. Presumably these 'geophysics' companies aren't being used by your company any more and if you suspect there were deficiencies in the survey these were reported and addressed by the planning archaeologists and consultants involved? If they didn't provide an archive of the raw data did that mean they didn't meet a specification / WSI?
Unfortunately the state of play in archaeological geophysics is as bad, and some would say worse, than in the rest of commercial archaeology. There are some companies who are cheap but do not actually have the necessary expertise and experience to do the work properly and use staff who are not properly trained. Its (relatively) easy to walk up and down a field but much more difficult to get consistent reliable data. Many companies who now do geophysics are totally fixated on getting coverage regardless of data quality. Unless the companies who are doing the sub-standard are pulled up on it by the company who hire them, the consultants and or the planning archaeologists then they'll keep doing it. Rant over and apologies to anyone reading this who were interested in the 'free archaeology' discussion!