Free archaeology

[Jack]

Think you missed a few, GI monitoring and topo spring to mind straight off, am sure there are more, and I hope your DBAs use a bit more than just HER/NMR!

Yep, missed the etc.......but got bored of the ad infinitum, others include: boring, monitoring boreholes, palaoenvironmental assessment, offshore magnetometry, remote sensing etc etc.

But to pedant your pedantism........

Surely topo survey is a mitigation strategy, though I agree can be used to spot sites, bit expensive though, better to use Lidar data or your eyes on walkover survey (both in my original list so ner) :face-stir:

[Doug]

I don't know about continuing this PP. I think it might be reaching the point were our personalities clash. Probably my style of writing vs. your style of writing is not compatible e.g. general vs. detailed, etc. Also, I think what I am interested in conversation-wise tends to not be what you seem to be interested in. We are probably just not compatible on a forum like this.

I am starting to get frustrated with our discussions and a little too snarky, which isn't fair to you or anyone else that has to read through my comments. This will probable just lead to name calling and hurt feelings at some point. So I think am going to disengage from discussion with you. I think we are just going to clash and waste both your and my time. Just giving you a heads up so you don't think I am ignoring or snubbing you when you respond to my posts and I don't back. Best of luck with your curator work and if you happen to see me at a conference or event please introduce yourself, maybe we can hit it off in person better than on the forum. Maybe not, but we can at least give it a try.

cheers
Doug

[Jack]

You understand a 2/3rd - thats better than i thought...

PP does come up with the next BIG question - and I am opening a new thread for it... To Dig or Preserve

Not that big a question.........preserve, unless it needs to be rescued

Remember the lessons of the past

[Jack]

nope - dont why you even think that. surely it is best for an archaeologist to be employed to dig it? surely it is best that it is rescued from the plough, looters, unit, shifty consultants, bad builders etc asap

I nope your nope.

Yes stuff get looted, stuff get destroyed by the plough but more is destroyed by archaeologists (or the unscrupulous non-archaeologists like unit - ouch)

Its far better for everyone involved to avoid significant archaeology under a commercial project.

Anyone involved in commercial archaeology will know that we perform rescue archaeology. Stuff gets missed, lost and destroyed; whether its during assessment, mitigation recommendations, sample excavation strategies and definitely during watching briefs. And don't get me started on recording large complicated sites in a thin pipe-trench width excavation.

Under your premise, everything would be destroyed by them pesky 21st century treasure hunters, nothing left for us 23rd century palaeotachyonologists or palaeomolecularologists.

[P Prentice]

Its far better for everyone involved to avoid significant archaeology under a commercial project.

Stuff gets missed, lost and destroyed; whether its during assessment, mitigation recommendations, sample excavation strategies and definitely during watching briefs. And don't get me started on recording large complicated sites in a thin pipe-trench width excavation.

it is far better for the resource and for archaeological theory if it is undertaken as a commercial venture. no university can undertake the kind of projects we do. they do not have our funding and they do not have (with a few notable exceptions with commercial units) have our skills. i know for a fact that some of the leading academics have on record that given their time again they would be in commercial archaeology because that is where the best research is undertaken. the major drawback is that inadequate work is permitted, mainly because the lowest tender still rules, but often because there is nobody in place to recognise the neccessity or the opportunity to push for the best possible. we all know that a vast amount of mitigation is crap and that far too much effort is spent on the least return, such as watching briefs on pipe trenches
and now dinosaur will tell us how brilliant he is -

[P Prentice]

I don't know about continuing this PP. I think it might be reaching the point were our personalities clash. Probably my style of writing vs. your style of writing is not compatible e.g. general vs. detailed, etc. Also, I think what I am interested in conversation-wise tends to not be what you seem to be interested in. We are probably just not compatible on a forum like this.

I am starting to get frustrated with our discussions and a little too snarky, which isn't fair to you or anyone else that has to read through my comments. This will probable just lead to name calling and hurt feelings at some point. So I think am going to disengage from discussion with you. I think we are just going to clash and waste both your and my time. Just giving you a heads up so you don't think I am ignoring or snubbing you when you respond to my posts and I don't back. Best of luck with your curator work and if you happen to see me at a conference or event please introduce yourself, maybe we can hit it off in person better than on the forum. Maybe not, but we can at least give it a try.

cheers
Doug

okeydokey doug - writing reserch designs, editing reports, peer reviewing and nitpicking is what i do - see you around

[tmsarch]

Geophysics is only really any good for spotting cut features, walls, burnt things and, occasionally, stuff like surfaces, when it works at all. That's where other types of evaluation like fieldwalking come in - flint scatters are usually entirely in the topsoil and don't show on any type of geophysics, for instance, but of course usually go away when you topsoil strip, will shortly be having that one out with a client...

There are other useful applications for geophysical survey, for example electrical sectioning/electromagnetic survey techniques can be very helpful in modelling the extent and 3d subsurface architecture of archaeological and palaeo-environmental sequences. Very useful on alluvial sites with deeply buried former channels and land-surfaces - the type of places where traditional evaluation trenching can be arduous and expensive. Combined with some boreholes and test-pits/trenches for near surface remains such survey can help you very quickly build up a decent chrono-strategraphic sequence that you could never achieve with trial trenching alone.

There are certainly some situations where lots of survey methods combined can be much more powerful than the sum of their parts.

What I don't like is when a negative geophysical survey in isolation is used as a reason for not doing further archaeological works. All the survey can show is what it has found - what it won't show is what it hasn't/couldn't find. There can be all sorts of reasons why geophysical survey fails - be it the type of geology, nature of archaeology, nature of overburden, past land-use, etc, etc.

That doesn't mean its not useful - indeed sometimes its invaluable - for example rapid survey along a broad pipeline corridor can be helpful to inform initial routing decisions (yep along with other techniques maybe fieldwalking, walkover, predictive modelling (!) - you'd never be able to evaluate such wide swathes of countryside at the options stage by trial trench (sorry unit). Once the line's been fixed you can move on to intrusive techniques, but these often provide little more than a long transect through the landscape - bits of sites captured within the easement. The geophysical survey will have covered a much wider area allowing you to start seeing your site in its wider context.

[Unitof1]

tmsarch don't be sorry. If I was a landowner and your pipeline company wanted to consider my land in the "option stage" I would insist that the archaeologists who undertook the survey was appointed by me and to be paid for by the pipeline developer. When all was done I would then charge what had been spent on doing the archaeology survey as the cost of archaeology lost from the value of my land and charge that as compensation. As a compensationary charge I think that this would be exempt of vat. hum now what kind of survey would I insist on. thinks

[Wax]

hum now what kind of survey would I insist on. thinks

The most expensive and least informative?

Lets not kid ourselves archaeology destroys the past!!!!!!!!:face-stir:

[Unitof1]

I am sure that it would be precisely informative.