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21st August 2013, 04:06 PM
I know of a paper in pps in which the author does not know that 10 square metres are not the a same as a ten metre by ten metre box and presumably neither did the editors or the peer reviewers, they run a unit. From looking at gingers survey which I would suggest is just about unanswerable it would be interesting to know when ginger last did any academic mathematics and to what standard. Archaeology is littered with people who barely got through gcse maths who think that some statistics is the answer to their phd (almost all). I would suggest that orton, shennan pretty much set their careers on supplying that market. Most of the self appointed processtionalists who decided to invent postisum turn out to be mathematically illiterate on examination. Kev whats the dissertation on? (not that I think that it is connected to this thread)
Reason: your past is my past
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21st August 2013, 06:16 PM
Unitof1 Wrote:Kev whats the dissertation on? (not that I think that it is connected to this thread)
Basically I am reviewing the use of GIS as a primary recording tool in archaeology......
With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...
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21st August 2013, 06:22 PM
Primary sounds a bit mathamatical
Reason: your past is my past
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23rd August 2013, 01:31 PM
Dinosaur Wrote:...is what you actually said? Afraid that isn't true, modern Specs and WSIs usually include reasearch objectives as part of the mitigation
Ah, I see.....I missed some words out..........
That should have read:
[in] commercial post-ex...we only do what is reasonable or what needs to be done now, by us. We don't waste (the clients) money on engaging in
extensive (or unwarranted) programmes of research on material that can be stored for perusal by academia.
Commercial archaeology only mitigates any damage done...
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4th September 2013, 08:48 AM
q: what is an appropriate sampling strategy?
a: one that is appropriate
q: can you determine what is appropriate before you dig?
a: yes as it is always appropriate to change strategy depending on what you find
q: are appropriate sampling strategies adopted in commercial archaeology or are expedient sampling strategies used in commercial archaeology?
a: ................
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers
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4th September 2013, 10:10 AM
trowel or mattock everything's a sample of some sort, its all wood for the trees. When anybody says sampling to me its mostly an environmental specialist cost that someone has mostly arbitrary inflicted and you normally find out that the fill from the ditch had plants and animals that liked wet places with some plants and animals that did not and must have felled in. Obviously if you don't get this type of result then you have to go back and reconsider if it was a ditch after all. A very similar thing happens with pits. Sometimes there is a rumour from the east that metal/ceramic working was undertaken in the past and this brings out its own breeds of samplers often closely followed by something called an eh science officer which are probably the most pointless form of existence I have ever come across hence the world being populated by diggers with magnets in plastic bags who have discovered that there's iron just about everywhere
Reason: your past is my past
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4th September 2013, 12:16 PM
Unitof1 Wrote:...there's iron just about everywhere
Hammerscale
does seem to turn up in almost every IA/later context, presumably the whole landscape was wind-contaminated about 2 seconds after the first British blacksmith opened shop?
[have used this for phasing before now, no hammerscale = early, with hammerscale = late, seemed to work]
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4th September 2013, 12:23 PM
P Prentice Wrote:q: are ... expedient sampling strategies used in commercial archaeology?
a: depends how many miles away the vehicles are parked }
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4th September 2013, 05:50 PM
Jack Wrote:English Heritage 2011. Environmental Archaeology: A guide to the theory and practice of methods, from sampling and recovery to post-excavation (second edition)
especially pages 8 - 14, fig 5 is especially important.
(hey, what has EH ever done for us?:face-stir
always wondered how they built that model in fig 5. it strikes me as pretty useless if you cant tell what is residual - which you cant - and if anything is likely to skew the dataset with a bias based on poor science. try sieving hundreds of 40lts samples on acidic sites and finding bugger all in any of them and you might well revert to subsampling to see if anything survives
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers
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5th September 2013, 09:01 AM
P Prentice Wrote:try sieving hundreds of 40lts samples on acidic sites and finding bugger all in any of them and you might well revert to subsampling to see if anything survives
Seedygirl will tell you that should be ok for plant/charcoal survival?
Anyway, that's what evals are for? She's just finished processing a load of samples from my last big eval, which has nicely demonstrated that we won't be bothering to sample
anything on the main job that doesn't have obvious charcoal or waterlogged...once she's managed to dig all the compacted clay out of her sirafs and settling tank....
