Free archaeology

[BAJR]

I do believe that Doug has said PM AND eval/strip. just saying.

I love pm I also like holes in the ground. the trouble is we are looking at commercial versus research agenda as well. where the commercial is limited to the sites that are being developed while the research is looking for the sites in the landscape.,

So horses for courses. and by the way.. Unit of one made complete sense over the past few posts... I demand a recount

[Dinosaur]

Do you think the PP/Unit alter ego barriers are breaking down under the strain and are starting to bleed together? }

In some areas where there's been a lot of commercial work the data is starting to lead the research? I can think of several examples in my own portfolio where stuff I've dug on commercial projects is becoming the subject of academic research endeavour, just need to prod the university bods in the right direction...[obviously talking to them occasionally helps!]

[Unitof1]

academic research endeavour

you mean find some poor mug to wallow in debt whilst their lecturers walk around talking a load of rubbish to mostly foreign msc students.

[kevin wooldridge]

.... the trouble is we are looking at commercial versus research agenda as well. where the commercial is limited to the sites that are being developed while the research is looking for the sites in the landscape.,

Surely though there isn't any blame to be apportioned to commercial archeologists....however curators, development control archaeologists, call them what you will ..... should be taking landscape into account according to advice from EH and encapsulted in PPS5....if they are not they should be challenged as to why not!!

[BAJR]

call them what you will ..... should be taking landscape into account according to advice from EH and encapsulted in PPS5....if they are not they should be challenged as to why not!!

WEll said!

[Unitof1]

call them what you will ..... should be taking landscape into account according to advice from EH and encapsulted in PPS5....if they are not they should be challenged as to why not

for what point. The "site" is defined in the planning application. You are just supporting their only point of existence which is exactly the same as that of geophysics which is that they can somehow reduce the expense of archaeology to the client. We don't give a monkeys for any curators PM abilities. These PMs are unsubstantiated by evaluated by trench- and up themselves and we lose money from it and have to pay to support them on top of it all. No one needs them.

[Doug]

Eerrrr - Doug, how do you 'predict' completely new types of archaeological feature? I've got a big site going to analysis (when the cash is sorted out) where we have several major features which as far as I can tell are completely unprecedented, certainly in the published literature. Admittedly within a major Neolithic 'ritual' complex, but they only turned up during area stripping

Also, following the Neolithic theme, what happens when all the literature/'data' upon which your predictive modelling is based turns out to be b***ocks - apparently according to all the recent literature Neo pits are primarily associated with said 'ritual' complexes, whereas when you look at sites in North Yorkshire where theres been big area stripping it turns out in reality that's the one place there don't tend to be any (e.g. the Marne Barracks palisaded enclosures, and epic amounts of stripping around another big site hasn't turned up any) - they're everywhere else though...PhD anyone?

Short answer- you don't

Long answer- you don't

There is a reason PM doesn't work all the time. Actually the most fun in PM is when your model is wrong or dosen't account for certain sites. Aptly named in the PM literature as 'red flag sites' reminds me of what we were digging a few days ago David- white ware. God we need to get better at naming things. }

Anyways it is why I, and most PMers, don't recommend PM to replace anything. It is best used by consultants in the early planning stages of a project e.g. build your road here if you want to avoid it. For most commercial archaeology (in the UK) it has very little application. Developer John has already decided where he is putting his house, buiding, road, etc. so you dig.

So can anyone point to the post where I said PM was the be all to end all of everything? I feel like we keep having the same conversation in which I say always always dig dig and dig and people keep saying PM is bollocks. Which I have to say makes seem like we are missing each other.

[Unitof1]

It is best used by consultants in the early planning stages of a project

No it isnt

[Doug]

No it isnt

Yes, defiantly

(ha two word response, to you Unit, I expect a one word response)

[PhaseSI]

Normally geophysics is used to find minerals and oil and gas. It normally does it by finding what it can do most easily ie your saves time, money back approach

Not sure this makes complete sense!

But with polluter pays archaeologists can have a go at finding "all" the archaeology on a site. By all I mean "total archaeology"- single context recording methods of excavation. Archaeologists require "evaluation" to put a cost to this. Geophysics cannot in any way do this. Archaeologists already have a site based on the landowners planning application. All you are doing is selling landowners the promise that they can reduce their archaeological evaluation costs by doing geophysics. You are confusing discovering a potential site with evaluating a site for excavation. Stop it, we already have a "site" of archaeology, we don't need you.

I'm very puzzled as to why you say geophysics can't assist in evaluating a site. Geophysics (and APs and a DBA) all help put the evaluation trenches into a context and so are critical parts of an evaluation. And yes if geophysics is done, and the results assessed properly then I think that you can potentially reduce the amount of evaluation trenching required. Although this actually doesn't see, to happen very often.

I've not read all of your previous posts / rants. Are you saying that all sites that are put up for development should be totally stripped for the purposes of assessing the archaeology and seeing if there is an archaeological site(s) there? I agree that if you do this you don't need geophysics but that isn't going to happen. So because we live in the real world where entire (development) sites are rarely fully assessed then geophysics is needed. Not necessarily by you (I'm presuming you do actually work as a commercial archaeologist?) but by anyone who wants to work in the system of identifying archaeological sites that we have in the commercial sector.