what is the point of doing medieval archaeology anyway?

[deadlylampshade]

Uh oh...I'm having post new server update deja vu!!! I am SURE I answered this one and some twit made a comment about Hadrian's Wall being a pile of bricks.

If that's the case, Stonehenge is an oversized pack of traffic bollards so nyer, nyer , nyer!}

Isn't it nice to be back

[Sith]

Having read Mr Melton's speech, perhaps we should be asking ourselves 'What is the point of archaeology' because it looks like we are going to need to have a much more persuasive argument handy in the coming months.

[Dinosaur]

Hear! hear! Are we actually likely to learn much more from digging in minute detail yet another identikit RB roadside settlement? (footprints aside!). Am currently having to deal with a huge and unique Neo site with probably less than a tenth of the resources thrown at the footprint site, which I seriously doubt anyone will even remember in ten years time unless something amazing comes from the PX..... :face-crying:

[deadlylampshade]

I think I am getting as close to a sense of humour failure as I have ever had, which takes a lot.

DOES IT MATTER WHAT THE PERIOD IS??????????????????????????? It's the correct excavation of the site which is uncovered that's the point, surely?

If you'd ignored the A1 RB roadside settlement in favour of something more to your personal taste you're as bad as Cllr Melton in my book.

NOTHING in archaeology is identikit.

There is ALWAYS something to learn.

Don't you believe in the moral requirement to do as good a job as you can for the exposed archaeology rather than target the "interesting" bits? It's worse than Time Team...

Jeeez....back to the bar.!

[Misty]

I'm with Deadly on this.

[Dinosaur]

Sorry, nearly missed these, not been on for a few days (work) so had moved rather a long way down the thread list... If you've only got limited resources, why not expend them where you might actually learn something? As is the way on road schemes, rather larger resources are available than on most developments, so huge amounts of money get spent on what is often not, in the grander scheme of things, stuff that is going to move archaeology forward in any direction (except possibly another spot on a distribution map on page 398 of the next 'Overview of Roman Archaeology in Britain'). Its all back to the way the overall developer-funded pot of gold for the commercial sector gets expended - an unfortunate side-product of the development/site-specific nature of nearly all modern field archaeology in Britain. Sites which can be intrinsically more informative towards our understanding of the past frequently occur on developments which are relatively poor in funding/resources for archaeology. Nothing against Roman roadside settlements (lots of ditches and finds, and a few dead people, fun digging), although they do seem to result in generally identikit reports. Oh, that A1 site was carefully done to avoid all the good stuff (like the actual settlement/?fort) by re-routing the road, so what was dug was mainly peripheral stuff (that wasn't supposed to be there).....how many 'V'-sectioned enclosure ditches can the literature handle? :face-stir:

[Jack]

But..................."God is in the detail."
-Sam Tyler

[deadlylampshade]

...sounds more like devil in the detail in some of these reponses...