10th October 2014, 04:58 PM
Dino I agree that geophys should not be considered an evaluation but I don't think that evaluation should be seen as a waste of money. You seem to be suggesting that the saving of not doing any evaluation very neatly increases the budget for excavation by not wasting money. The whole point of evaluation is to establish the costs of excavation. A lot of archaeologists, I think wrongly, use evaluation to determine presence or absence of significant archaeology. Your gravel site methodology (is it excavation or evaluation methodology?) of strip and plan is post application. I presume that the gravel quarry people, yourselves and the curators are all satisfied with what you are achieving at the budget time frame that you have agreed on. Question should be what evaluation was that cost negotiated on because if you haven't got one I imagine that you got the job of "excavation" over anybody else because of some other method that did not involve archaeological evaluation? If so is it that you are gambling with the clients money on what might be there?
.....nature was dead and the past does not exist