Is single context recording the only way?

[pdurdin]

Here is a pdf ( actually works! )

I just see a white page and "Generated with Agisoft Photoscan" in the corner... :face-huh:

Ah I bet it needs Adobe Acrobat. I use Foxit reader for PDFs.

[Dinosaur]

Here is a pdf ( actually works! ) of a trench I did as a test - the planning and interpretation is made so much easier! the section was unavailable to draw properly and a photo was impossible. ( width of trench and safety _

enjoy! a section I could not have drawn or recorded any other way.

http://www.bajr.org/documents/whitecastle.pdf

the record was done with both a sketch and context record sheets.


Forgot to say... download and then use mouse (with left mouse for rotate and right mouse for zoom and both for move) to look around

Yup, that's the one :face-approve:

The first one we tried it out on was a complete set of house footings excavated into a deep-strat Roman vicus, took some stitching together (and the half-a-coke-bottle looks a bit odd) but you can tour the footing trenches, turn around and check out the sections, or fly like a bird and see the overall aerial view, not something possible in real life since no access for a cherry-picker. A lot of late evenings for the CAD contingent but got excellent report illus not possible any other way. Has required a bit of a mental adjustment in how to take site photos though! You can use it on old (and very old) APs too, if you've got enough coverage...I hadn't :face-crying:

[Jack]

I can't get the pdf to work..............I feel left out:face-crying:

[Sith]

Some companies are looking to embrace the technology, where hand planning as a rarity unless there is something of particular complexity or detail. Everything else is GPSd.

I would need a very tight specification defining the threshold at which features become so common that they can be planned using GPS.

I would also need to see some very clear definition from the contractor about how they establish and maintain the accuracy of their GPS surveys, by which I mean not just a sentence saying 'we use the Cyberdyne Robo Planner which is accurate to the nth milimetre' but the processes they use to record and guarantee accuracy on site on a day to day basis. I'd also need some convincing that someone using a wobbly pole with either GPS or a TST is compably as accurate as someone with a planing frame, plumb-bob and pencil.

[Dinosaur]

Plans done using just GPS usually look b***dy awful...unless of course they've been tarted up a bit by the CAD crew back in the office, in which case are they really an accurate depiction of what was on site? And to follow on from Sith's comment, I've seen some GPS poles being used at some very strange angles....

[kevin wooldridge]

I agree with Sith and Dino that plans created by holding a wobbly pole can look awful. Accuracy and detail of course depends on the skill of the surveyor as much as it does with analogue planning. There are ways of making TST/GPS plans more or less accurate such as using digitised rectified photography with fixed point location that overcome many of those problems. That said I have also seen some very nicely drawn plans that are equally inaccurate due to a site grid located by a mixture of stretchy tapes, bent steel rods and dodgy 3-4-5 triangles...Most drawn plans these days also require digitising and again that is also a matter of accuracy and some skill. There have been studies done as to the loss of accuracy and loss of interpretation at different levels and the number of stages involved in digitising site plans and profiles. Just cos they look professional and 'nice' don't mean they are accurate, whereas sometimes what looks less aesthetically pleasing can be very accurate....Apples and pears really. (other fruit based comparisons are available)

[P Prentice]

which is all by the by when it was badly excavated and/or mis-understood anyway. the record begins with an interpretation and ends with an interpretation - if you are lucky one will counterbalance the other - if not you get some of the pointless rubbish that pervades the literature and skews anything resembling a dataset

[Dinosaur]

Just for once I agree with PP (don't all faint at once), knowing what you're drawing in the first place is probably the most important thing, far too many site drawings, however they're done, 'miss the point'.

Kevin - having worked with the surveyors/CAD contingent here for long enough, I know how to produce site plans/sections that apart from effectively tracing over don't really need any further work, and makes for happy bunnies in that part of the office, the challenge is persuading other people to modify their drawing style along those lines - actually, getting them to write the drawing number more than 1mm high in something blacker than faint 12H pencil so we can then find said drawing in under an hour in PX has so far proved something of a challenge...

[kevin wooldridge]

Kevin - having worked with the surveyors/CAD contingent here for long enough, I know how to produce site plans/sections that apart from effectively tracing over don't really need any further work, and makes for happy bunnies in that part of the office, the challenge is persuading other people to modify their drawing style along those lines - actually, getting them to write the drawing number more than 1mm high in something blacker than faint 12H pencil so we can then find said drawing in under an hour in PX has so far proved something of a challenge...

...In a sense that is the whole point of this thread. I wanted people to think about how we have to modify the SCR/SCP system to take account of commercial archaeology and/or digital and technological advances...if we have to amend it at all. I think we agree on that.

[GnomeKing]

(analogue mind working....

working...

working...

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.