17th May 2015, 10:38 AM
Nice one Mr B :face-approve:. Though there are "standards" in UK archaeology it is sometimes very difficult to pin point exactly what they are and one unit's interpretation can vary a lot from anothers. And as you say if the result is the same what's the problem but we all know the result is not the same and how do you measure the result when the evidence has been removed?. I work a lot with volunteers who move around the country on various "professionaly" run community excavations and many of them ask very pertinent questions as to why they have been taught to do things in a particular way on a particular site and then find it is done completely differently on another site. I sometimes find myself making excuses for what units are doing when actually my suspicion is that keeping the cost down (in both community and commercial archaeology) is what is driving "standards" rather then doing the best for archeaology. Dont get me started on the other aspect which is the skills shortage and the lack of formal field training.