Recording

[TrenchMonkey]

How long did it take you guys to become good at recording a site. recording finds in situ and mapping the whole site is the only area in my opinion that i really lack. Does it take time before ya can wip out ya pencil and record a whole site if asked to. Or is it that i am the only one who finds grappling with this quite difficult.

[destroyer]

Errr, still dont really know if I ought to be classified as good.

I think most people generally just need to be allowed to get on with their own recording from the very start and they'll pick it up pretty quickly. Ditto for site planning, just ask to have a go and within a few days you'll be fine. Anything particularly complicated ought to be checked by the boss anyway.

You just need a bit of confidence and the ability not to weep into yout thermos at teabreak when the PO decides its all wrong because he's changed his entire personal interpretation of the site. When you whip out your pencil, make sure its got an eraser on the end of it.

[1man1desk]

Many recording tasks are very mechanical - as long as you remember what recording needs to be done, you can do it. The difficulty is that because it is often boring and repetitive, people skip bits, thinking 'I can come back to that later', backlog builds-up. Don't fall into that trap!

Some recording tasks do require real skill, or at least a knack, either because they involve archaeological interpretation/judgement or because they require some form of manual dexterity, talent or experience. Try to tackle quite big batches of these tasks at one go, because then you really get into practice. Try to make sure that you have a copy of the unit's recording manual to hand, refer to it as you go along, and if you are struggling don't be afraid to ask for advice. Whatever you do - don't skip steps in the process.

If you follow all that, then you should be able to learn recording quite quickly. I learned it properly over the course of one summer. Be warned though - different units don't all use the same system, and recording deep, stratified urban deposits can be very different (and more demanding) than recording rural plough-truncated remains.


1man1desk

[muddyandcold]

How long? How long is a piece of string... I've know archaeologists whom after 6 years of excavating failed to understand the basics of stratrigraphy, matrixs and soil descriptions. One young lady on a site was ademant that she understood everything there was to know about excavation/recording flouting her 'MOLAS Certificate'. Dispite all this she couldn't record, or dig (smoking whilst taking samples!) I had to ask her to leave, a difficult situation as she was a 'close friend' of the unit director. She is now working a large private company in london (MOLAS won't employ her).

Best thing to do, take you time (within reason) and always ASK if in doubt. Absolutely NO shame in not knowing. It takes forever to sort out another persons errors in post-ex.

[troll]

To largely reflect the words of others here-be patient, don`t be too hard on yourself and it will come. Repetition has a wonderful nack of embedding systemic mechanics in the psyche after a while. The most important thing to remember is that we all will only ever be as good as the people we work alongside. Ask! You will gain huge amounts of respect from your colleagues if you simply ask of their time-it shows that you care about getting it right. If we are all to be honest-all of us, from new grad to Indiana Jones, we learn something new every day-either from the site or eachother. Be patient mate and bleed your colleagues dry! Won`t be long and a newbie will be asking you......if you want to speed up the process, volunteer to understudy whenever recording is being carried out.Go get it mate, best wishes and good luck.:D

[deepdigger]

Spot on there mate!
I've been doing it for a while and I'm only just getting profficient now!
I was lucky that my supervisor although he never got stuck in with a shovel was excellent at recording!

deep

[mercenary]

Yep, keep asking questions. More importantly ask yourself how you could do it better next time. The worst archs are in my opinion the ones who for whatever reason (boredom, arrogance, stupidity) stopped asking that.

[deepdigger]

Yes quite! It takes a long time to learn that, you don't just need to dig in archaeology, there is a lot more to it than that!

deep