13th October 2014, 12:57 PM
PhaseSI Wrote:Fair point. Cost considerations aside if a project goes to strip and record before any evaluation and archaeology of national importance turns up then what happens.
In my example we had known archaeology of national importance anyway, known about for 60-odd years, but the powers-that-be had decided not to schedule it. Upshot was the client already knew the archaeology was going to hurt financially...although considering the value of 20M tonnes of gravel I suspect we appear somewhere down in the 'sundries' section on their annual accounts...
Actually, archaeology of 'national importance' doesn't take any longer to dig than the other sort, on our biggest on-going excavation the Scheduled bit stopped at a fence that used to cross halfway down the site, archaeology's much the same both sides of that line and being treated the same way. The last thing I had published in a 'proper', non-regional journal was arguably of international importance (it certainly seems to get referenced a lot in overseas journals, anyway) and that got dug in 2hrs in lumps in sub-zero temperatures on a January morning, no different to any other feature [apart from the cool stuff]