1st May 2010, 11:30 PM
Dinosaur Wrote:I suspect most of the actual diggers following this thread would be appalled at the concept of weighting DBAs pessinistically? There's little enough work for them as it is withought people (which clearly includes yourself and Unitof1) not even bothering to go looking for archaeology! Most of the best stuff I've found over the years has been by going out and digging a hole where there wasn't 'supposed' to be anything. Writing off a site should always be a last resort, and for a b****y good reasonI'm with BAJR on this one. I don't think they were saying that you should write the DBAs deliberately to write off the archaeology. The point being made as far as I read it was that the DBA should be a realistic assessment of the available evidence. If you start saying there is stuff there when the evidence is unclear or not there just so that you can get to do field work clients are going to get wise to you soon enough and think that you are trying to screw them. At that point all your work dries up and you have shot yourself in the foot.
'Reality,' sa molesworth 2, 'is so unspeakably sordid it make me shudder.'