19th May 2015, 08:08 AM
(This post was last modified: 19th May 2015, 10:25 AM by Marc Berger.)
Remember hosty that before you turn cleaning the base of a trench into a standard to be monitored that it's wise to clean at least one of the sides first as the cleanings tend to fall on the base and it goes all smuggy. . Obviously if you subsequently discover that all the archaeology is in the face and that the trench is over cut we will need a standard about what to do next. I suggest four standards. One for people who still clean the bottom knowing that there is no archaeology there, one for those who clean thinking that there still might be something there, one for those who don't clean knowing that there is nothing there and my one not cleaning knowing that the palaeolithic is always with us. I dont clean because I usually clean and draw a plan as I go. If by the end of the trench I have planned nothing I write on my envalope that there is nothing there, draw and anotate a represenative sample take a picture for no good reason and cross the trench off a list and am all miserable at not having found anything and put all my efforts into whether there is a sharpe contact between the subsoil and "natural". I have a standard for people who don't clean and plan as they go but talk a good clean and it rhymes with up themselves twat not that I could care less unless they then ask me to plan their trench which suggests another set of standard. Planning somebody else's trench. There are four standards for this and all result in me contaminating thier tea.
I have one other standards for evaluation that differentiates them into good and bad which lends hope to the worst trench ever dug by Jobsworths.. A good evaluation trench always leads to excavation no matter how badly dug and a bad evaluation trench does not lead to excavation no matter how well it was bloody cleaned. Obviously a good evaluation trench may have miss identified the iron age as the Anglos saxon and something bigger underneath may subsequently be found in Excavation. Big deal. That's what the contingency is for and it's where evaluation archaeologists need to cut their teeth.
I have one other standards for evaluation that differentiates them into good and bad which lends hope to the worst trench ever dug by Jobsworths.. A good evaluation trench always leads to excavation no matter how badly dug and a bad evaluation trench does not lead to excavation no matter how well it was bloody cleaned. Obviously a good evaluation trench may have miss identified the iron age as the Anglos saxon and something bigger underneath may subsequently be found in Excavation. Big deal. That's what the contingency is for and it's where evaluation archaeologists need to cut their teeth.
.....nature was dead and the past does not exist