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Marc Berger Wrote:No your lost in the real world of consultancy management part of which is none existent pre-application eh advice. Something called heritage in which you will find yourself looking through door frames and talking about phenomenology and inter-visibility by creating a time line with assigned asset receptors. I am not sure how you worked out that you had a preserved prehistoric landscape over several kilometres. Must give me the reference sometime.
Ah, so speaks the anti-scientist :face-stir: (tongue firmly in cheek).....lets try and hide the issues in words people hopefully understand.....its all about pre- or mid or sometime re-application. Thats how you save archaeology from destruction. I thought that what we are all doing archaeology for.
If you don't know how to spot a preserved prehistoric landscape you shouldn't be doing DBA's anyway. (or interpreting landscapes).
Marc Berger Wrote:I use lemon juice to get the really black stuff from out of my nails...
Washing your hair (if enough is left after years of head scratching) works well too.
I am guessing down there in wherever this thread is eluding to there are many more noddy DBA's than up here? I have to say I have done a few projects with pitiful excuses of DBA's and WSI by other companies. But I have also been trained to do them right so i know how much work and expertise is involved in doing it well.
The point of a good DBA/mitigation methodology seems to be to convey knowledge and information to non archaeologists in such a way as to justify and quantify the need to undertake archaeological mitigation works. Without such a report how could you possible undertake things like costings and programming construction works?
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Jack Wrote:Without such a report how could you possible undertake things like costings and programming construction works?
How can you possibly provide costings and programme construction works on the evidence of a DBA alone?
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26th June 2014, 08:12 AM
(This post was last modified: 26th June 2014, 08:16 AM by Marc Berger.)
My prediction is that the likes of Jack, like many In commercial archaeology, undertook Prentices two weeks + introduction to digging on a big excavation. Often these big excavations are part of big construction schemes which would have started with an eia/dba (produced for public inquiry purposes) and so it is the natural conclusion of the pawn in the game to be indoctrinated into dbas being the overriding necessity. That the site should have been evaluated completely passes many by. Even though big excavations are often areas of coincidental concentrations Big excavations also have an effect for the belief that the subsoil is a buried prehistoric landscape rather than the residual remnants of disparate isolated events throughout prehistory. You never really hear adout kilometers of buried medieval landscapes although I suppose pompeii is a roman example. Is Jack saying that he knows of a massive Lahar event in Britain in the prehistoric period?
.....nature was dead and the past does not exist
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Marc Berger Wrote:My prediction is that the likes of Jack, like many In commercial archaeology, undertook Prentices two weeks + introduction to digging on a big excavation. Often these big excavations are part of big construction schemes which would have started with an eia/dba (produced for public inquiry purposes) and so it is the natural conclusion of the pawn in the game to be indoctrinated into dbas being the overriding necessity. That the site should have been evaluated completely passes many by.
On the contrary, I have been on several jobs without a thorough DBA and have still managed to save much significant archaeology thus proving the opposite. However, had a decent DBA been done, my, my manager's, the planning officer's and the variety of construction companies jobs would have been much easier.
I just can't understand your persistence that they are all useless. How do you propose a planning officer can decide whether to add an archaeological condition to a planning application, or decide what condition is appropriate without someone assessing the site's potential?
Or are you one of those misguided and ill-informed archaeologists that believe that ever bit of topsoil needs to be sieved for every find and every layer has to be removed by trowel?
Marc Berger Wrote:Even though big excavations are often areas of coincidental concentrations Big excavations also have an effect for the belief that the subsoil is a buried prehistoric landscape rather than the residual remnants of disparate isolated events throughout prehistory. You never really hear adout kilometers of buried medieval landscapes although I suppose pompeii is a roman example. Is Jack saying that he knows of a massive Lahar event in Britain in the prehistoric period?
No but those in the know, know that places like the Vale of Pickering, large tracks of Shetland/Orkney, and even larger tracks of uplands in say Northumberland represent vast areas of preserved prehistoric (and later) landscapes.
It isn't everywhere that the plough has removed meters of archaeology.
Maybe you misunderstood preserved for 'frozen in time'
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believe me when I say that I have never sieved any top soil and I mostly machine through the roman looking for the Creswellian (and found it).
Please do carrying on selling dbas to your clients.
.....nature was dead and the past does not exist
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interesting discussion...
Marc and Jack both have a point;
A lot depends on the specifics of the 'site', > dba is whole different kettle of mud for, eg historic town center with industrial archaeology, formal gardens, historic records and many map regressions...vs. eg a large complex landscape with multiple relevant locations, previous investigations, multi-proxy data and long periods to consider. >> both quite necessary, and essentially close to primary research/data collation in thier own right.
However some DBA are just padded out SMR/HER checks - so i can sympathise with Marcs piont of view, especially when we consider the impact(or not) any of this has on field investigation...or the proliferation of the dreaded Consultant, who (IMHO) often lack the technical expertise to complete the more complicated DBAs all-on-thier-own anyway
Anyway; I am moving to thinking that basically our default position should be 'trowel every layer', unless (effectively) it can be cogently argued as unessescary (and justified, eg though data)
This is considerabley better than having to argue each time for the opposite.
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behave Gnomekine dbas -heritage statements don't argue anything archaeological , they are merely antes to be in the Beamos PINS game
http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/upl...d_call_ins.pdf.
Quote:dba is whole different kettle of mud for, eg historic town center with industrial archaeology, formal gardens, historic records and many map regressions...vs. eg a large complex landscape with multiple relevant locations, previous investigations, multi-proxy data and long periods to consider. >>
- if you want to price an excavation you need an evaluation. DBAs are not evaluations.
.....nature was dead and the past does not exist
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GnomeKing Wrote:'trowel every layer'
That's got a kinda "singing Austrian nun" vibe to it!
But it just might catch on...
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27th June 2014, 02:03 AM
(This post was last modified: 27th June 2014, 02:06 AM by GnomeKing.)
- if you want to price an excavation you need an evaluation...[/QUOTE]
that, my good sire, is HIGHLY debatable > as i have ranted on about several times before ...
> if fact, the original 1994 EU funded review of evaluations as a survey method and 'pred
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Sikelgaita Wrote:How can you possibly provide costings and programme construction works on the evidence of a DBA alone?
Not alone but as part of. You need to bracket possible costings/timescales. But you need to justify why and what.
A good DBA presents what is known in the development area, but also presents the results of an investigation of what is likely to be there, from lumps and bumps spotted during the walk over, to interpretations of geophysical surveys, to an experienced consideration of the landscape. A good DBA presents a combination of all the available data in a reasoned assessment of the potential for there being archaeological remains and it's likely preservation. But its only part of the process of formulating a mitigation strategy, then digging the stuff up!
And of course it's only part of the costing and programming of whatever construction project it is part of - d'oh. But without this information how can your client justify paying out for archaeological work, or indeed fit it into their programme of works?
