27th September 2012, 12:54 PM
Unitof1 Wrote:you dont have a kratzer do you.
As far as I know they thought that there was a big 8888 off roman/ironage defensive earthwork, as I have pointed out elsewhere it could possibly be on the northern boundary. As I remember the evaluation reports found bugger all going down to bugger all depth. If there was any archaeology it was a some obscure modern event which had scraped a lot of the site to natural and replaced it with modern spoil.
what a load of rubbish, I am sorry but it is the only tool for finding archaeology any other techinque only finds "potential" archaeology.
You misunderstand my comment. Yes, evaluation of earthworks, cropmarks and geophysical anomalies by trial trenching is of use in evaluating those anomalies and hence (if you got similar anomalies across the site) demonstrating the presence and extent of some archaeology on the site. But really, trial-trenching is usually only a destructive costing exercise.....be careful of the sensitive archaeology in the trench corner...oops you've just machined it away!
But using trial trenching alone on an area of unknown potential as a way of 'finding' characterising and defining the extent of surviving remains shows a complete lack of understanding of the archaeological record. Often it just leaves you with blank trenches and a no better understanding of the remains surviving beyond the sampled area. I've seen this used as an excuse not to do any further archaeological works/monitoring and wondered how many early prehistoric pits/cremations, or even field systems have been destroyed unrecorded.
I've just finished monitoring 57 GI test pits across a large development site. The only archaeology I came across were three stone-filled drains, and yet the cropmarks/ geophysics show a possible Iron Age settlement, at least two phases of IA/RB field system and a possible round barrow.
The test-pits weren't placed to avoid the archaeology but were a grid pattern sampling th geology of the area.
Based on another similar sites I've done (similar area, similar size, similar geophysical results) a while back I'm expecting to also uncover clusters of Neolithic/ Bronze Age pits across the area and a few houses and burials.
Now tell me how this means that evaluation by trial trenching is the only tool for finding archaeology?
