15th February 2014, 08:29 PM
One issue with the 'IfA way' which promotes, for instance, single context recording, is that it is not the only way - for instance I've worked on sites where digging boxes beloved in the dim-and-distant by the likes of Wheeler et al would actually have been far more appropriate than the ill-fitting single-context approach. Many younger diggers these days recoil in horror at the concept of leaving baulks, which do, it may come as a shock to them discover, actually have their uses (if only for going back and checking once you've discovered all the impossibilities in the site matrix), anyway, what do they think all those un-dug bits of ditch are, if not rather wide baulks? And I'm getting fed up with people telling me that 'everyone' e.g. puts cut numbers in rectangles and fills in ovals, I don't for a start so that blows that one out of the water straight off, and in fact context numbers aren't the only way of recording archaeological deposits anyway, they're going to get a nasty shock when they come to work for someone who uses feature numbers with letter codes for the fills, for instance. IfA is slowly attempting to kill the diversity in archaeology ("you have to be a RO and do things our way").
Rant over - discuss :face-stir:
Rant over - discuss :face-stir: