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Apart from size and depth issues with pilings, there is also the problem of drainage. Pilings and similar foundation structures will undoubtedly affect the hydrological regime on-site and thus alter the drainage system, which can prove catastrophic for the preservation of organic and to a lesser (but also important) degree inorganic items. Preservation in-situ can become unmonitored wholesale degradation.
With regards to Thornborough, I feel there are a whole host of issues muddying the debate which make me unsure where i stand exactly. I would be interested to hear the thoughts of others on some of them.
Thornborough's ritual landscape. Apart from the henges, how much of it is upstanding? The landscape setting in which the henges find themselves now is hardly that in which they were constructed, and many arguments against quarrying of the surrounding landscape often seem to me to be based on a form of NIMBY-ism rather than any real archaeological arguments. At the moment the archaeology is buried, it is being destroyed by ploughing etc (although i agree this aspect is easily exaggerated) and to build on our knowledge it will have to be excavated at some point. The question then is how, and under what conditions?
Whilst i agree that commercial archaeology often does not reach the highest standards due to time, money constraints etc, I would also argue that it is here that you find some of the best field archaeologists. I would bet a substantial amount (at least two beers on a diggers wage!) that a professional team would excavate to a far higher standard and produce more viable information in 6 months than a student dig operating for 2 months a year over 5 or maybe 10 years. What is lacking in my view is the coordination between academic archaeologists and field units, so that rescue and contract archaeology is conducted in an informed manner on the current intellectual debates and driving research questions. If this were achieved and time and funds were made available then real headway might be made in many areas, not just in relation to thornborough. Although i have a sneaking suspicion that many academic research excavations are largely about feathering the nest a little. Two months digging in the summer, 6 months post-ex every winter, 1 month planning every spring, 9months work and wages funded by some grant body.
This post is getting a little longer than intended, so will stop for replies........
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I do accept at least some of your views guys however-in this instance, I was confronted with a stark choice. Either, I mattocked through at least 9 Roman floor surfaces and intermittant silts just to see what lay beneath, or, I leave the archaeology for future endeavours. I had five days left. Once again, the archaeology was a victim of massive underestimation during the assessment stage. Whilst I also readily accept that pres in situ can mean many things to many people, I would argue that this potential eventuality could be written into the project design and associated PAMs. Rather than allowing developers a free hand with how they interpret "pres in situ", perhaps adequate and more importantly, agreed standards and guidence should be drafted.Infidel- agreed, professional archaeologists would far outshine academics armed with unqualified undergrads in the field but, we can be as professional and competent as we like-the ridiculous and offensive constraints placed upon us in a commercial environment will nearly always screw the archaeology. I agree with you, Thornborough may have to be excavated some time in the future but, not now, not under the farcical, obnoxious, degrading, hopelessly inadequate "guidence" that consultants are so fond of defending. Archaeologists should discuss the needs of the archaeology at Thornborough.When agreement is reached, Tarmac should then be told of their obligations. This process has no place within a flimsy planning framework where commercial and political interests have a nasty habit of denying the public the justice their heritage deserves.
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A few years ago i carried out an "eval" at a roman site, the site was to be used as a cadw gift shop/information centre. as usual we found lots of walls and stuff, so it was decided that pres in situ would be in order. recently we have had to return as a change of supervisor at cadw has decided that the walls should be exposed, so we've gone back, ripped up the nice new cobblestones and exposed the walls.
Why this couldnt have been done the first time i dont know!!
deep
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The Thornborough debate like all other sites has to be taken on its own merits.
First of all in the wider context, an application to quarry in the Thornborough Area is outside of the counties local minerals plan on several measures and we should therefore bear in mind that in order to grant any application to quarry the minerals authority will have to ensure that granting that application does not cause overproduction of gravel, and that the "benefits" of the development are better at Thornborough than could be obtained elsewhere.
That being the case, the council should be looking for good reasons to allow quarrying, as opposed to finding reasons not to allow it as would be the case if the site was in a preferred extraction area.
Based on PPG16, it is clear that any loss of archaeology is a cost, along with the loss of good quality farmland to be weighed against any "benefits" of turning the quarried out remains into a partial nature conservation area as has been proposed.
The initial debate, of which archaeology forms only a small part, is therefore whether quarrying should be allowed in this area at all. I believe the council should stick to its minerals plan - a total cessation of quarrying at Thornborough would stop the significant overproduction against the plan, would prevent a significant acerage of farmland from being lost and would ensure a very important archaeological landscape is not transformed out of all recognition. Whilst I take the argument about setting, it has to be agreed that quarrying is a particualrly extreme form of devwelopment - not something that should be rubbing against such an important site with so much gravel already identified elsewhere within the Minerals Local Plan.
The argument of setting is a lesser one, and should not be applied to simply the henges, but I'll come back to that.
The primary question surely is "how important is the archaeology on Ladybridge?".
All I can say is - if a Neolithic temporary settlement was found 500m from Stonehenge, in an area not earmarked for quarrying that had already revealed a significant ritual landscape was being destroyed - would we be happy if it was quarried? Also bare in mind this is rural North Yorkshire we are talking about - Thornborough is an hour from any city - harldy an area under severe development pressure.
On more thing, who says only upstanding archaeology has value?
Save the Thornborough Henge Complex - http://www.timewatch.org
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the Valetta Convention apparently Venutius 
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[:0] They must have made a mistake then 
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Quote:quote:Originally posted by Infidel
Whilst i agree that commercial archaeology often does not reach the highest standards due to time, money constraints etc, I would also argue that it is here that you find some of the best field archaeologists... What is lacking in my view is the coordination between academic archaeologists and field units, so that rescue and contract archaeology is conducted in an informed manner on the current intellectual debates and driving research questions.
I'm sitting in front of my computer cheering Infidel on - Great words. I'm resigned to the fact we're stuck with developer funded archaeology and we're going to have to work within that framework. The system needs changing though - developer funded archaeology has great potential. But...
Currently there is a huge variation in reports produced in the commercial world. If we believe in the principle of replacement by record we *must* make the record as dynamic and as three-dimensional as the archaeology that it's replacing was. Often I've seen the scenario where commercially-generated reports are 'fire-fighting' The planning authority (note: not the curator - see below) is fulfilling their 'obligations' to ppg-16 by allowing the production of reports that are simply descriptive. The interpretation and discussion of the site is minimal and dry (this is no criticism of anyone who writes them, I wish I was half the archaeologist that some of the people I come across in the commercial sector are). Often there are no questions asked. I've never seen a developer-funded report with section headings like:
What are we trying to find out from this site?
How does it contribute to our understanding of this period/area?
What does it tell us about the development of a settlement / landscape?
What does it Mean?
How does this fit in with current academic thinking on this period etc.?
The quantity of information amassed by ppg16 is vast, and could (and, I'm sure in some places, does) tell us so much. Where the system works well there is debate and advance (rigorously implemented regional research agendas for example) but as the system is now there seems to be a great deal of variation in what a curator can ask for in a report and what is deemed 'reasonable' by the planning authority. If the LPA doesn't care about the archaeology, then there's no way they'll see a 'research' element of a developer-funded report as 'reasonable' and when the developer complains about it being onerous, the LPA will side with the developer over their own archaeologist (yes, it happens folks).
Ultimately we need consistency - where local authorities are obliged to sign up to research agendas. Not the patches of good, bad and indifferent we have now.
I'm pretty sure this would make the whole experience of doing archaeology in the commercial world a whole lot more fufilling for all concerned.
-Moley
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Moley-Brilliant! Would love to see you prepare and present this as a paper. It seems to me that reports and standards thereof are in desperate need of a monitor. It is also patently obvious that curators need law as much as planning officers need to rediscover the concept of public accountability. I have seen reports penned by consultants/academics and contractors that frankly, if they were not so transparently pathetic, they would be immensely amusing.
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just a quick one - i wasn't implying any less value to buried archaeolgy compared to upstanding, merely that unless upstanding it is not part of the ritual landscape that we can observe. Obviously, if you were the people that buried it in the first place then it would have a role in the ideological landscape existing on another level, but we in the present have no way of entering that place without the process of excavation.
I suppose what i was trying to say, perhaps badly, is that the ritual landscape argument for protecting the surrounding environment of a site is one that can quite easily be undermined, and therefore more coherent arguments and strategies must be in place to be able to fight abuses within the (what has already been highlighted as the inadequate, and usually developer-biased) framework with which we have to work.
I'm also appreciating Moley's post. How many among us when starting out in whatever manner to become field archaeologists envisaged the dry reports which herald the completion of a site being the end product? Where is the interpretation and development of a constantly growing framework of knowledge? I shudder to think at all the information buried away in grey literature which, if pieced together, might revolutionise our view of so much that happened, the how's, why's and wherefore's. I believe Moley is spot on as well in the notion that it has to be built in as a planning authority requirement, simple time/money considerations make that a must in the world of competetive tenders.
Any ideas as to how we can make this happen?
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Perhaps a re-appraisal of excavation reports on a county by county basis? As a field arch`, my colleagues and I can do much to maintain and indeed, push the envelope of standards in the trenches-how do we support curators in an endeavour to raise the standards of records? I must be boring the crap out of everyone but-here we go again... the current state of play (ppg16) can be seen as a simple knee-jerk reaction with origins in the Thatcherite competative tendering circus. It had it`s day, yes it got us on the agenda.That`s where, in my opinion, the bubble bursts. Archaeology requires law- if, we are to play on a level field. The Automobile Association recommended the use of seat-belts for decades.Lots of people died. Seat-belt LAW comes into effect, less people die. Developers are required to carry out the minimum-planning officers can ignore archaeologists. This is nothing short of a national scandal and a sham.
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