Are Standards in field Archaeology Slipping

[P Prentice]

whereforartwerethou standards harked back to foreverwards? dostthou refer to yon oldendays of yawn wherein diversely capable archies did plunderon goodly through diverse monuments and cropmarkets in pursuit of the inedible, closely followed by yon ministry of funnywalks and dead parrots? any of us who have had occasion to reexcavate an earlier excavation can probably tell some tales and any of us who have been in search of an archive can probably wish we never found it. there have always been rubbish excavations and people continue to reference them as if they were infallible. now there are thousands of us plundering away digging pitiful percentages and writing pitiful interpretations making it slightly more difficult to pick through the miasma. maybe we need less venal decontamination and fewer excavators so we can do more archaeology