12th November 2008, 09:29 AM
can I just give an example of how applying technology worked on one site...
Ten years ago at Spitalfields in London a major monastic cemetery was due to be excavated by MoLAS. Estimate was for 2700 burials. With traditional permatrace planning or even rectified/target recording, the actual recording of the burials would have taken a long time, so the geomatics boffins came up with a way of using pencomputers linked to EDM's to 'capture' nodal points on the skeletons and graves and other related features in 3-D. These were then downloaded and a matrix could be built up using Auto-CAD to view the data top-down and side on. The context sheets were filled out by the excavators, the skeletons were 'checked' by the supervisors/surveyors (all very experienced archaeologists) before recording. The result was that c10,000 (the cem was a little bigger than we thought!) burials were excavated and recorded electronically.
To either side of the cem area the main monastic precincts and later post med sequence was recorded in a traditional single context manner. It was realised (after previous experimental sites) that the 'penmap' technology was no good for complex strat. Now this system was just digital planning, not an integrated paper-lite system, but the skellie sheets could easily have been done on a palmtop. Overall many excavators felt deskilled as they did not plan, but anyone could feel deskilled if all they did was excavate identical burials all day for 8 months, the context sheets generally declined in quality (again from repetition), and the matrix HAD to be done off-site as it was too complex for individual excavators to keep a handle on. Overall it worked well, but we still needed the sketches on the context sheets etc to make post ex interpretation possible.
We did use the penmap recording for other areas of the site where they were truncated and cut features only, our experience was that as long as you had a surveyor on site all the time it was quicker, but sketches had to be far better than normal, and most of the time if there was no surveyor it was more efficient to just lay out grid, plus the excavators then had a better spatial handle. Of course most of this was within an urban strat environment, where you are trying to get the excavators to really understand the processes and run their own area of the site, and it can all be a bit more complex than some old field system, but this to me is the crux, that any electronic system does not end up de-skilling excavators as that would lead to a loss in fine detail and quality, despite neater plans. When something is typed up it always looks more professional. Let's just hope it is....
Ten years ago at Spitalfields in London a major monastic cemetery was due to be excavated by MoLAS. Estimate was for 2700 burials. With traditional permatrace planning or even rectified/target recording, the actual recording of the burials would have taken a long time, so the geomatics boffins came up with a way of using pencomputers linked to EDM's to 'capture' nodal points on the skeletons and graves and other related features in 3-D. These were then downloaded and a matrix could be built up using Auto-CAD to view the data top-down and side on. The context sheets were filled out by the excavators, the skeletons were 'checked' by the supervisors/surveyors (all very experienced archaeologists) before recording. The result was that c10,000 (the cem was a little bigger than we thought!) burials were excavated and recorded electronically.
To either side of the cem area the main monastic precincts and later post med sequence was recorded in a traditional single context manner. It was realised (after previous experimental sites) that the 'penmap' technology was no good for complex strat. Now this system was just digital planning, not an integrated paper-lite system, but the skellie sheets could easily have been done on a palmtop. Overall many excavators felt deskilled as they did not plan, but anyone could feel deskilled if all they did was excavate identical burials all day for 8 months, the context sheets generally declined in quality (again from repetition), and the matrix HAD to be done off-site as it was too complex for individual excavators to keep a handle on. Overall it worked well, but we still needed the sketches on the context sheets etc to make post ex interpretation possible.
We did use the penmap recording for other areas of the site where they were truncated and cut features only, our experience was that as long as you had a surveyor on site all the time it was quicker, but sketches had to be far better than normal, and most of the time if there was no surveyor it was more efficient to just lay out grid, plus the excavators then had a better spatial handle. Of course most of this was within an urban strat environment, where you are trying to get the excavators to really understand the processes and run their own area of the site, and it can all be a bit more complex than some old field system, but this to me is the crux, that any electronic system does not end up de-skilling excavators as that would lead to a loss in fine detail and quality, despite neater plans. When something is typed up it always looks more professional. Let's just hope it is....