Just how many versions and hybrids of single context recording can there possibly be? Love it, loathe it, lets have it...what do you think of single context recording? How would you enhance the system or run it more efficiently? 
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Love it! One of my post-ex duties is to digitise plans and then perform analysis within a GIS program. Our method is straightforward, features that intercut cannot appear on the same plan but the plans aren't neccesarily single period. I find it particularily important on multi-period urban sites where the relationships between features can be quite complex.
dinos
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An archaeological site is just a big 3-D jigsaw puzzle, and dug properly, should be taken apart piece-by-piece, in the correct reverse order that it was formed. The best way to record this process is by using a fully-implemented (but still flexible) single-context recording system, used properly, by good diggers who know what and why they're digging, how to fill in context sheets fully, can draw a plan of a feature so it looks like it does on the ground, and can take a photo that is in focus with the right scale in it. Once you start getting into situations where (for example) sampling of features is employed, supposedly homogenous (archaeological) deposits are allowed to be machined out, areas are abandoned or done by watching brief and compromises are made on the original specifications for the work because the time or the budget is running out, etc., then the system begins to become cumbersome and the cracks appear. I've seen a fair few compromises to the recording methods in the time I've been involved in archaeology. Most are for the worse, are designed to save time, and ultimately the majority take the thought process out of the practice. This is, frankly, appalling.
Some common current practices I really hate are:
Planning by EDM (NOTHING can beat a good set of site drawings, drawn & annotated by people who are skilled at the job! Anyone remember site planners? Have a look at some Victorian "Antiquarian" drawings of buildings or archaeological structures, and tell me then whether the spidery digital plots and blobby colours that we get in reports these days are better...)
Trench Sheets in Evaluations (Sorry - but good practice dictates that context sheets should be fully filled in for all contexts - even in boring negative trenches. This goes double for "Watching Brief Sheets" as well.)
Bizarre "Sectioning" Practices (Seen this a lot recently, particularly when intercutting pit complexes are investigated. Funny-shaped slots, tiny little holes poked at the edge, etc. "Sampling" of stratified deposits? It's just wrong.)
Stupid Site Strategies (such as only investigating the foundation trenches of proposed buildings - leaving most of the site "preserved" on towers of stratigraphy underneath. I once worked on a site once where the foundation trenches were only 50-60cm wide, and we were expected to dig in them, and understand the site under those conditions. It was pathetic and it as a curator, I've never recommended anything remotely like it despite pressure to do so from developers. And I never will.).
Not all technological or methodological "advances" give better results, and maybe we should be asking ourselves, as a profession, who we are making these changes for. If the answer, ultimately, is for the speed and/or convenience of the developer, then collectively we should be ashamed of ourselves and actively strive to do something about it.
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Is your apparent addiction to paper a side effect of working for a local authority bureaucracy Curator Kid? Good practice does not in my opinion dictate endless repetition and duplication in the case of negative trenches - as anyone who has ever undertaken a large and largely negative evaluation would realise. This comment just marks you out as yet another curator totally out of touch with the practicalities of conducting archaeological fieldwork.
As for Single Context recording, well it's 'horses for courses'. Although it is great in complex, deeply stratified 'urban' situations, it is unecessary and cumbersome on extensive 'rural' sites.
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I did a post-ex course at Birkbeck a few years ago. OK it was only an extra-mural post-diploma course looking at the previous year's Birkbeck dig, but the bit I liked was a series of seperate context sheets, with all drawings and levels, for a modern 100mm drain, complete with seperate context numbers for the cut, two fills, the drain pipe AND the plastic connecting sleeve.
Devotion beyond the call of duty?
Today, Bradford. Tomorrow, well, Bradford probably.
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Maybe it was done on Curator Kid's watch?!
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Quote:quote:Originally posted by vulpes
Maybe it was done on Curator Kid's watch?!
Nope,it was mine! (Hi Invisible Man - hope you are well haven't seen you around in a while  ).
If any of you are interested, Birkbeck also does a much more in-depth post-ex course at the MA level, using old DUA sites. It's tricky, but most people who take it seem to find it worthwhile.
Cheers
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Quote:quote:Originally posted by vulpes
Good practice does not in my opinion dictate endless repetition and duplication in the case of negative trenches - as anyone who has ever undertaken a large and largely negative evaluation would realise.
I would largely agree with that (sorry, CK). My problem comes in when shorts cuts are taken that don't allow for re-assessment of the site at some future date - there still has to be a basic record that is written up and archived. And short cuts being taken that aren't agreed, because that's when you can get into short cuts being used to disguise bad practice, or more typically, not enough resourcing. 'Cause that's a different kettle of fish altogether.
And would also agree that sometimes you need single context planning, and sometimes you don't. But it is fun flipping through the permatrace at the end of a single context site - sort of like one of those old flip picture books you used to get when you were a kid.
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Curator Kid is dead right - couldn't agree more. Vulpes, I believe he has mentioned his fieldwork credentials previously. He was talking about stratigraphy NOT empty f***ing trenches.:face-confused:
Troll is right in that there are a few hybrids around. Stick with the original - Museum of London - used properly can be fast and effective. Paying lip service then half sectioning, 'sondages', sample excavation, mixing EDM planning and conventional planning - it don't work. There have been many attemts to get 'less for more' in recent years. Quantity rarely equates with Quality.
Curator Kid - wish you worked on my patch:face-approve:
The old example of modern cuts being given the full works is tripped out many times - 'look how crazy single context planning is'. Museum of London had a very neat way to record such things - double dot -dash = truncation!! (That said, recording modern cuts can have a use in re-uniting very minimally disturbed finds to original deposits).
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Quote:quote:
even in boring negative trenches
achingkness, at least do me the courtesy of reading the thread before posting your angry sweary comments 
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single context system-bogs dollox or nightmare?
