22nd October 2012, 09:11 PM
Cheers for the thumbs-up, Dino. I felt I had to get that rant off my chest!
Now, as for preservation in situ. I'm going to paraphrase (accurately, I hope) a Project Manager who used to work in London. I'm not sure I agree totally with this and there are holes in the argument, but it's fun. Here's this site, and you know from other sites which were nearby that it's a cracker. You might like to do a limited evaluation with a very tight method statement to check it's all it's cracked up to be; in fact, it turns out to be the archaeological equivalent of an Old Master. The mitigation strategy amounts to building the development on a raft suspended on concrete piles. But if you do this, wd you still have an Old Master? How many holes can you dig (with the difficulties of making sense of such a stratigraphically complex site from such limited final intervention, along with the dessicating and laterally intrusive impact of pumping concrete at some pressure down into these valuable deposits) before it ceases to be an Old Master? And now came the final rhetorical coup de grace: "Would you just cut holes in a Rembrandt?"
Enjoy and discuss!
Now, as for preservation in situ. I'm going to paraphrase (accurately, I hope) a Project Manager who used to work in London. I'm not sure I agree totally with this and there are holes in the argument, but it's fun. Here's this site, and you know from other sites which were nearby that it's a cracker. You might like to do a limited evaluation with a very tight method statement to check it's all it's cracked up to be; in fact, it turns out to be the archaeological equivalent of an Old Master. The mitigation strategy amounts to building the development on a raft suspended on concrete piles. But if you do this, wd you still have an Old Master? How many holes can you dig (with the difficulties of making sense of such a stratigraphically complex site from such limited final intervention, along with the dessicating and laterally intrusive impact of pumping concrete at some pressure down into these valuable deposits) before it ceases to be an Old Master? And now came the final rhetorical coup de grace: "Would you just cut holes in a Rembrandt?"
Enjoy and discuss!