17th February 2014, 11:20 AM
Ah, this is part of the "concept/practice" confusion! Your "Pit 6, Layer F" is just a rebadged SCR system, since you give each deposit or cut a unique identity, and then relate them stratigraphically as best you can. The myth of SCR concept is that it requires somehow giving everything a sequential number - you can call 'em "Fred, Barney, and Ethel" if it floats your boat. The problem is that somewhere along the line the simple logical concept of dividing excavated features up into individual artefacts of activity and giving them unique labels has been hijacked by those who insist on imposing a fixed process on their workers, creating the odd rigid systems we all know & loathe. (Only one cxt allowed per drawing sheet, and each sheet is a grid-defined 5m box, so a single pit can span FOUR sheets if it is in the corner? Please! That's a process-Nazi's nightmare come true...)
Digging in boxes isn't an issue, but you then need to decide how you dig, investigate, and record the features within the box. If the site is amorphous soil with no discernible edges or differences, and you intend to dig it in 1x1x1m cubes and dump the finds in a bag with no attempt at strat - fair enough. But if you dig a set of Wheelerian boxes on a site while still identifying all the cuts, fills, and layers encountered, you're just doing SCR in "sub-trench" arbitrary divisions. (And if you are hitting identifiable features but NOT recording them separately in a way that lets you relate each preserved episode of activity, one has to ask "WHY?"...)
The issue is that SCR is a detailed description of activity on a site that sees (for instance) a "building" as a high-level grouping made up of mid-level groupings called "walls", each made up of single contexts for posts, post hole cuts, packing, fills, etc. The decision is "what level of detail do I need to fulfil my project requirements?". If you are only describing the whole village, then you don't need SCR, but if you are demolishing the building then you do. Either way, the concept of the building being divisible by SCR units remains valid. It's kinda like studying physics - you can go "high level" and look at planets, or you can focus in to look at molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, or even quarks - each level of zooming-in has its own separate descriptive "language" even though the underlying thing can be studied at multiple levels. (And the ultimate prize in physics is a Unifying Theory that lets them use the same tools to look at the microscopic and macroscopic without needing different rules.)
So, you can still record your drain as "Drain 123" without doing any SCR on it, but essentially that's just saying "I know Drain 123 is a Group that probably contains a bunch of contexts, but I don't need to go into that much detail for this report". As long as the drain isn't destroyed (so others can record it in more detail later) that's perfectly ok. And if you treat "Drain 123" as a Group, you can still integrate it with the records of the adjacent SCR-excavated trenches...
Digging in boxes isn't an issue, but you then need to decide how you dig, investigate, and record the features within the box. If the site is amorphous soil with no discernible edges or differences, and you intend to dig it in 1x1x1m cubes and dump the finds in a bag with no attempt at strat - fair enough. But if you dig a set of Wheelerian boxes on a site while still identifying all the cuts, fills, and layers encountered, you're just doing SCR in "sub-trench" arbitrary divisions. (And if you are hitting identifiable features but NOT recording them separately in a way that lets you relate each preserved episode of activity, one has to ask "WHY?"...)
The issue is that SCR is a detailed description of activity on a site that sees (for instance) a "building" as a high-level grouping made up of mid-level groupings called "walls", each made up of single contexts for posts, post hole cuts, packing, fills, etc. The decision is "what level of detail do I need to fulfil my project requirements?". If you are only describing the whole village, then you don't need SCR, but if you are demolishing the building then you do. Either way, the concept of the building being divisible by SCR units remains valid. It's kinda like studying physics - you can go "high level" and look at planets, or you can focus in to look at molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, or even quarks - each level of zooming-in has its own separate descriptive "language" even though the underlying thing can be studied at multiple levels. (And the ultimate prize in physics is a Unifying Theory that lets them use the same tools to look at the microscopic and macroscopic without needing different rules.)
So, you can still record your drain as "Drain 123" without doing any SCR on it, but essentially that's just saying "I know Drain 123 is a Group that probably contains a bunch of contexts, but I don't need to go into that much detail for this report". As long as the drain isn't destroyed (so others can record it in more detail later) that's perfectly ok. And if you treat "Drain 123" as a Group, you can still integrate it with the records of the adjacent SCR-excavated trenches...