13th February 2007, 12:12 PM
Merc
I think you might be on the right track about the total bill being too expensive. However, it also has something to do with getting the best return on the investment (god, how I hate that sort of language) - on large sites there is a greater potential to focus work on parts of the site (either spatially or stratigraphically) to examine areas where we might learn more about that which we don't really understand.
I think I may have caused a few apoplectic fits amongst councillors recently on one urban site whan I suggested that detailed excavation of the Saxon remains was crucial as we know very little about that period within the town, whereas we could deal with the Roman levels in as more superficial way as this was much more well-understood. Almost all previous excavations in the town centre had removed the Saxon material without recording in order to look for Roman town houses. However we still live in times when aged councillors have a deep seated reverence for Roman mosaics and little time for the post-Roman grub huts that overlie them.
I don't really understand why we do not apply the same ideas to small sites - perhaps you are right in that here the total bill does not look too bad even if we excavate everything in detail, so we just do it anyway - if so then this does not reflect very well on the profession and perhaps we should be considering this issue more carefully.
Beamo
I think you might be on the right track about the total bill being too expensive. However, it also has something to do with getting the best return on the investment (god, how I hate that sort of language) - on large sites there is a greater potential to focus work on parts of the site (either spatially or stratigraphically) to examine areas where we might learn more about that which we don't really understand.
I think I may have caused a few apoplectic fits amongst councillors recently on one urban site whan I suggested that detailed excavation of the Saxon remains was crucial as we know very little about that period within the town, whereas we could deal with the Roman levels in as more superficial way as this was much more well-understood. Almost all previous excavations in the town centre had removed the Saxon material without recording in order to look for Roman town houses. However we still live in times when aged councillors have a deep seated reverence for Roman mosaics and little time for the post-Roman grub huts that overlie them.
I don't really understand why we do not apply the same ideas to small sites - perhaps you are right in that here the total bill does not look too bad even if we excavate everything in detail, so we just do it anyway - if so then this does not reflect very well on the profession and perhaps we should be considering this issue more carefully.
Beamo