14th January 2014, 03:31 PM
Hmm. Some interesting questions, and would love to see Mr Barford produce some considered research in a civil & professional manner, but...
P Prentice has a point. Don't see how you could get statistically viable results given the plethora of wildly differing sampling strategies, use/absence of detectors on spoilheaps, presence/absence of someone who knows how to switch 'em on, whether or not U/S and topsoil finds are retained, before we even get into taphonomy, geographic variation and all of that.
Besides, there are many HERs that collate this sort of artefact data these days (though admittedly not all) - why not approach the HERs themselves? If there are any useful comparisons to be gleaned, going via HERs would give a more comprehensive dataset than ad-hoc appeals to those accessioning archives. They'd also be duty-bound to give him an answer. Maybe I do him a disservice, but this doesn't sound like it'll produce the sort of robust stats that this whole debate could benefit from.
P Prentice has a point. Don't see how you could get statistically viable results given the plethora of wildly differing sampling strategies, use/absence of detectors on spoilheaps, presence/absence of someone who knows how to switch 'em on, whether or not U/S and topsoil finds are retained, before we even get into taphonomy, geographic variation and all of that.
Besides, there are many HERs that collate this sort of artefact data these days (though admittedly not all) - why not approach the HERs themselves? If there are any useful comparisons to be gleaned, going via HERs would give a more comprehensive dataset than ad-hoc appeals to those accessioning archives. They'd also be duty-bound to give him an answer. Maybe I do him a disservice, but this doesn't sound like it'll produce the sort of robust stats that this whole debate could benefit from.