distinctive regional traditions

[Dinosaur]

So, say, a ditch full of Roman pottery under a 1960s concrete floor may in fact date from the 1970s? Should make report writing more entertaining anyway

[P Prentice]

...whereas the rest of us would like to know the actual relationship

on simple sites, but anywhere that has more than a couple of recuts its all jackanory

[Dinosaur]

If ditch A with 98 recuts all full of rocks is crossing ditch B (with a nice stone-free silt fill) at right angles, it should still be pretty obvious what the relationship is, or did all you guys miss that day on your Uni training dig?. I've done an urban site with 6' of strat consisting entirely of intercutting visually identical pit fills where we had to work it all out from the tipping angle of the egg shell (thank *** they liked their eggs in the medieval period). Unit would have saved months and tens of thousands in budget with one of his slots and a context sheet saying 'brown layer with some egg shell overlying natural, oh and a few bits of pot'....

[Dinosaur]

on simple sites, but anywhere that has more than a couple of recuts its all jackanory

on the other hand the results can be pretty amazing when you bother sorting it all out - little things like eg when a major Roman road was built, cuts through all the c*** in the literature. Helps having a big and well-dateable finds assemblage of course (good stuff, samian in large quantities, especially the signed stuff) and specialists who can be bothered to sort out all the residuality issues etc, but sorting out the strat in the first place definitely helps, you should try it one day

[Sith]

Unit would have saved months and tens of thousands in budget with one of his slots and a context sheet saying 'brown layer with some egg shell overlying natural, oh and a few bits of pot'....

At least he filled in the context sheet.

[Unitof1]

so tens of thousands spent on intercutting visually identical medieval pit fills where we had to work it all out from the tipping angle of the egg shell. Sounds like a council site and a council unit and council curators and public money to produce a pretty pointless archive in a council museum -prey tell what did the evaluation suggest that you would find and what was the tender for

[Dinosaur]

The eval suggested that there would be just that and it was for a shopping centre (which has now been open for 20 years) - but then that was back in the days when things still got dug properly

[Unitof1]

dug properly - what does that mean actualy

[Dinosaur]

100% of the archaeology within the area, by hand, by people who actually know what they're doing :face-stir:

[Unitof1]

100% by hand 6' thick 10s of thousands visually identical medieval pit fills and egg shells

you have got to tell us where we can find a report of this site I particularly like the 10s of thousands bit. I do think that in archaeology we should pass around details of which clients are particularly gullible possibly it was the shopping centre rather than the out of town hypermarket which drew out the readies. The hypermarket people have got a tendancy now adays to bus in out of towners to do the dirty work