antiquarianism is alive and well.

[Taverna Cat]

Morning from Greece...

Can I just say that I do not, in any way, shape or form, advocate the use of crappy methodology just so we don't look patronising in foreign countries. I just object to the presumption that we Brits - and only we Brits - know how to excavate 'properly' and that we need to take our crusade to the clueless foreign natives. I personally have no intention of adopting crappy methodology any time soon. I excavate the way I understand and with methodologies which work best for the site in question.

And...

[u]4. Greek style ‘give it all one context number and hope for the best’ (or so we are led to believe by TC).</u>

.... it's the Americans in the Athenian Agora who do this, not the Greeks. Each trench/area/locus is given a context number on a weekly basis and the material removed in buckets during that week, all bear this number. Supervisors make their observations in notebooks.

Anyhow, I'm off for some Greek coffe, followed by a trip to the DIY store for a new trowel...

[8D]

[Taverna Cat]

I seem to have stunned you all into silence/shock at the horror of weekly contexts..?!

:face-huh:

[Smaze]

Not stunned, but very intrigued about weekly contexts, only the Americans could surley dream that up, yet it sort of reminds me of when i was literaly given a trench plan on the back of a fag packet, showing the proposed trench location, tied in by three trees and told to located, (the location just happen to be in the middle of a wood), by a very a high up director of the BM.

[Matthew Ginnever]

I was once given a couple of empty fag packets to use as small finds containers. As 'student labour' I was kept out of such tiresome duties as recording, so im not entirely sure how contexts and planning were worked out on site, but I do know I never filled a context sheet in once. I was also told by the director that "archaeology has no intellectual integrety'. An odd thing for a professor in the same subject to say

[troll]

Not stunned either I`m afraid-neither am I surprised anymore

..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)

[Beardstroker]

Hmmm. And to think this morning we were all griping about the fact that my units recording system hasn't really been updated much, since about 1994.

Things could be a great deal worse, I suppose.:face-huh: