25th May 2008, 01:15 PM
1man, I think it depends upon the site itself as to whether cost is justified-a good example is Horncastle in Lincs. Over the southern half of the town sealed by the topsoil there is a layer of dark earth which has material truncated out of features that it is sealing,and going through the finds in postX with the pot person she explained that quite a bit of pot from the dark earth fitted pot still in the features,and when their location within the dark earth layer was plotted they were directly over the features.
Admittedly the cost of such analysis cannot be justified for every site but we should still make the effort to recover the material from the spoil heaps of open trenches as without it how do we give a fullest picture of the range of finds from that area?
A fantastic site I was on near west Deeping in Lincs produced hundreds of neo/BA flints from the spoil heap-twice as many as actually came from the site![8D]
Admittedly the cost of such analysis cannot be justified for every site but we should still make the effort to recover the material from the spoil heaps of open trenches as without it how do we give a fullest picture of the range of finds from that area?
A fantastic site I was on near west Deeping in Lincs produced hundreds of neo/BA flints from the spoil heap-twice as many as actually came from the site![8D]