10th November 2005, 07:38 PM
Quote:quote:I am thinking, for example, more about the site reports where you get endless descriptions of contexts and strat in the main body of the text, much of which does not actually add to the value of the report and could therefore be restricted to the context list in the appendix, thus ensuring that only the salient points are mentioned in the main text.
For once eggbasket I think I disagree. I hate writing and reading the boring description of strat in reports and would much rather concentrate on the fun discussion and conclusions sections. But I have discovered that the process of actually writing the sequence to be a massive aid to filtering out erroneous interpretations. Many of the interpretations that I initially formulated during excavation and survived to the report writing stage are seen to be rubbish when the strat description is worked out.
I don't know why this is the case, but it is how my brain works. Perhaps I am doing my post-ex strangely because I've never been taught a standard method. (But then who has?) Putting the context description tables and matrices in the apendices and ignoring the strat descriptions in the text just allows the lazy report writer to do the interpretive stuff too early in the post-ex process in my view.
Perhaps the reader of my reports finds the strat description segment tedious in the extreme (my boss calls my reports "workmanlike")B), but it should be an essential part of the report. I've seen far too many reports where this groundwork has not been done, and the resulting interpretations and phasing are riddled with flaws.