19th January 2014, 11:45 PM
geo Wrote:With paper thin profit margins the norm today one would expect senior management to consider very carefuly if to go ahead with the retrieval of lots of unstrat finds from spoil heaps. The cost implications this would bring with respect to conservation, curation and adding the info to the final report may well tip the project into the red. I have experienced this a few times when voluntering as a detectorist, where the Senior PO has told me that they now have a representative sample of RB finds so the rest can be left in the spoil.
That's a fair point but then we don't throw pottery away or other finds away in order to keep the post ex budget down. In fact coins usually provide better dating than pottery so we should be keeping all of them. If only a sample is kept then it's the couple left behind that might well have provided the crucial date for the deposit / feature.