1st September 2011, 07:16 PM
Jack Wrote:As Sparky does, we also send off stuff to an environmental expert to id the samples and to advise on the suitability based on amount of earthworm and snail disturbance and possibility of the sample to be dated as being intrusive...those individual charred grains and hazel nutshell fragments get around!
But take a long, hard look at such advice before acting on it! I've got a ???just possibly neolithic building which has remained undated cos the specialist ignored all the great lumps of wood-charcoal in the hand-crafted rock-cut postholes and recommended the limited budget be instead spent on some 'short-lived' material which proved too small a sample to date even using AMS....and, err, wouldn't the original posts have pretty much filled the postholes making it a bit tricky for anything else contemporary to have fitted in?...bugger I wasn't in the office to head that one off. Individual cereal grains, or even small groups, are, from experience, to be used only as a last resort, have had some well wacky results (those darned worms!) and hazelnut shell is nigh-on indestructible and hangs around for ever. Give me articulated bone every time.