24th October 2012, 10:35 AM
Unitof1 Wrote:I agree with poodash that watchig briefs should be only be used after an evaluation has been undertaken. Where I would go further is that anywhere that watching briefs were sanctined the curator that agreed to them are allowed them should lose their jobs.
I remeber meeting someso called archaeologist from ove arup in the eighties going on about how they had got around the archaeology problem in london by using piles and not digging out basements but the joke was that he was a geotechnical engineer and his job was to go around and pump grout all around the piles?
Came across this bit of properganda : http://www.ciria.org/service/Web_Site/AM...entID=8984
I kind of agree with UO1 here - watching briefs have always struck me as a very odd. Unlike other strategies (evaluation; full/partial excavation) and methodologies (geophysics; test pitting) it is the only one that is used solely in one area of the sector (ie commercial planning-driven archaeology). In my fieldwork I'd do evaluation before excavation - I'd never do a watching brief (I'd never need to). That's because its a method driven purely by the context of the threat not the nature of the archaeology. As UO1 seems to suggest, the use of WBs might be justified as an added safeguard when evaluation has shown minimal surviving archaeology in an area where the DBA suggested there might be some. But to have WB before an evaluation is pointless- if there is enough potential for archaeology for a WB then there should be enough for an evaluation surely?
However, it's been a while since I worked in either local government or commercial archaeology. As a matter of interest, in what contexts are WBs called for rather than evaluations?