28th June 2012, 10:45 AM
Wax Wrote:It lists a very wide range of methods and technologies but does not ask the fundemental question "Do you understand basic survey principles?" . It is very easy to use a Total Station or other high tech piece of kit but without understanding basic principals you do not know what are the most appropriate methods or the problems you might be building into your survey. Just cause it looks good dont mean it is accurate. How many know how to define or work within defined accuracies, and I do not mean those built in by the scale at which you plot the finished result.
It is far too easy for archaeologists to think they are surveyors just because they can set out a grid with a tape and set up a total station.:face-stir:
I suppose by asking the question of what levels of training people would like it is attempting to quantify what trainning might be needed. :face-huh:
I think we would run the risk of beating ourselves up over this, as they say. Do we all understand the principals of survey? Probably not, but then we use geological information all the time. Do we understand all of geology's principals? I doubt it. Not to mention history, biology, etc. (sing along everyone: 'don't know much about biology...') Using surveying appropriately to do what we want it to do is surely enough isn't it? Not only that, but how many times have I found myself attempting to relate something to a drawing I presumed accurate that was produced by an architect or similar? Even the OS mapping is sometimes remarkably dubious when compared to something actually surveyed. A superbly accurate trench plan, for example, isn't much use if the OS map it is going to be related to isn't very.
As for the point of the survey, I'm not sure, probably just something else to make us feel inadequate!