Bad for Archaeology - Good for Archaeologists - Discuss

[Unitof1]

I agree with poodash that watchig briefs should be only be used after an evaluation has been undertaken. Where I would go further is that anywhere that watching briefs were sanctined the curator that agreed to them are allowed them should lose their jobs.

I remeber meeting someso called archaeologist from ove arup in the eighties going on about how they had got around the archaeology problem in london by using piles and not digging out basements but the joke was that he was a geotechnical engineer and his job was to go around and pump grout all around the piles?

Came across this bit of properganda : http://www.ciria.org/service/Web_Site/AM...entID=8984

[david.petts]

I agree with poodash that watchig briefs should be only be used after an evaluation has been undertaken. Where I would go further is that anywhere that watching briefs were sanctined the curator that agreed to them are allowed them should lose their jobs.

I remeber meeting someso called archaeologist from ove arup in the eighties going on about how they had got around the archaeology problem in london by using piles and not digging out basements but the joke was that he was a geotechnical engineer and his job was to go around and pump grout all around the piles?

Came across this bit of properganda : http://www.ciria.org/service/Web_Site/AM...entID=8984

I kind of agree with UO1 here - watching briefs have always struck me as a very odd. Unlike other strategies (evaluation; full/partial excavation) and methodologies (geophysics; test pitting) it is the only one that is used solely in one area of the sector (ie commercial planning-driven archaeology). In my fieldwork I'd do evaluation before excavation - I'd never do a watching brief (I'd never need to). That's because its a method driven purely by the context of the threat not the nature of the archaeology. As UO1 seems to suggest, the use of WBs might be justified as an added safeguard when evaluation has shown minimal surviving archaeology in an area where the DBA suggested there might be some. But to have WB before an evaluation is pointless- if there is enough potential for archaeology for a WB then there should be enough for an evaluation surely?

However, it's been a while since I worked in either local government or commercial archaeology. As a matter of interest, in what contexts are WBs called for rather than evaluations?

[BAJR]

Must say that when I was in the DC curatorial work a few years back the WB was an anethma to me... eval eval eval...

A watching brief suggests that you won't find anything... so what is the point... and if you do think there is something there... then do an eval!

Or is that just me?

[P Prentice]

except there are circumstances when trial trenching finds nothing of a site you just know should be there - the watching brief becomes a useful fallback condition

[Dinosaur]

Watching briefs should be renamed, far too many clients presume that you'll just be watching and it'll be brief.... :face-crying:

[Sith]

Watching briefs should be renamed, far too many clients presume that you'll just be watching and it'll be brief.... :face-crying:

Many a true word said in jest.

Lots of our clients believe this. The belief that a watching brief is some sort of cheap option is also endemic among many of the engineering and non-heritage environmental types we deal with here at Death Star House. They continue to manfully resist my repeated warnings that this is "not the mitigation they are looking for". The Force must be weakening.

[Wax]

You might use a watching brief on a site that is protected (either through listing-scheduling or being managed by a heritage agency) when necessary remedial work has to be done ie replacing Victorian drains, puting in new fence alignments etc. The damage is minimal but the hole gives you a key hole view into the underlying stratigraphy.

Otherwise I am in total agreement evalutation-excavation is best, watching briefs are a disasterous way of applying mitigation and I have indeed, as Dinosuar has commented, in my time been told " Watch and make it brief" not totally tongue in check either.

[Unitof1]

As a matter of interest, in what contexts are WBs called for rather than evaluations?

The majority of conditions are for watching briefs -sorry monitorings, as a percentage of conditions impossed particularly post determination and predominatly on footings and occasionally on some linear pipelines.

To take it further I dont think that if a site if it is not recomended for excavation should have to have an automatic archive particularly watching briefs and negative evaluations

[Dinosaur]

Sadly am forced to agree with UO1, a sizeable majority of briefs I've seen in the last 20+ years around here (but from a considerabel number of different curators) have ended up with WB as the 'final solution' to the archaeology

...although I've made it my mission in life over the same timespan for as many as possible to actually end up as full blown (if often quite small) excavations, amazing how much archaeology there is out there if you put the effort into spotting it :face-approve:

Don't understand outfits who take the 'oh there won't be anything there' eyes-shut and just fulfill the minimum they think they can get away with without being prosecuted - approach to fieldwork. Our experience has always been that finding stuff is much better for cashflow and keeping people employed! I've personally turned a WB into a 6-figure project before now, and plenty into 4 and 5 figure jobs, so why settle for a few hundred quid and walk away having ignored all the archaeology? :face-huh:

[poodash]

I feel I'm being a bit miscontrued here. I didn't say there was no point in doing watching briefs, just that they shd only be done in certain circumstances and with a tight Method Statement outlining the scheme of works incorporating intervention by archaeologists, and appropriate levels of reassessment and a re-think of the work going ahead. In response to P Durdin, if you really reckon that a WB is going to pick up your archaeology when an eval has failed then I suspect you need to re-think your eval strategy. Or perhaps I'm missing a nuance here.

My all-time favourite example arises from a SAM (an Iron Age ditched settlement in coastal southern East Anglia.) Only half of the settlement was scheduled; the other half (situated beneath a former Victorian barracks complex) was deemed sufficiently safeguarded (by the Consultant Archaeologist and an uninterested curator) by a WB on very intrusive drainage groundworks in advance of housing development. Splendidly, a slightly random archaeological hero was despatched (along with others who were supposed to be more on the ball) who promptly noticed that the impact of the military buildings was v limited and localised and that, in fact, archaeological deposits survived. Cue an excavation discovering roundhouses, pits, postholes and the whole IA caboodle. Oh, and late Saxon stuff on a site with tantalising historical evidence for Danish raiders overwintering. Now, a simple decently conducted evaluation wd have saved the client a whole load of hassle and money up front. Give 'em the bad news first, get th shock out of the way, we can all get used to it and then work out where we'll dig first to get the groundworkers onto site, do the archaeology properly, keep on talking to each other and end up happy and the best of friends. That site wouldn't have been so difficult, but a consultant and a curator got in the way...