Is a decent specialist report a luxury?

[Unitof1]

The museum tell us how much they want what ever it is that we think we have. If they aint willing to pay for it (ie staffordshire unstratified gold bits) then they dont want it. Why do you want them to have to deal with it? Its the biggest fraud of the system which we have inherited from public service archaeology. At some vauge point in the past archaeologists working in excavation units were part of the museum system/education/they never realy wrote it down did they. They then tried to palm off the so called specialists with the units. They have ended up with museums basically run by entertainers. Hence vivacity for ex ample . Be interesting to know how digventures vivicityies arhieve is going to be "cared" for-paid for -justified.

[Dinosaur]

so you are saying that you got some up and comeing publication out of an evaluation (?) which is now spawning plans for a major excavation of an aurock burial site. Prey tell more as I suspect you are working for a council unit on a pet quarry site where you have a yearly budget and you split it up into doing a bit of evaluation followed by a bit of excavation no matter what the significance or worry about any archaeological compertition.

Some evaluations warrant publication in their own right (ok, maybe your's don't?), and I'd say a late Neo/EBA pit site stratified into a waterlogged palaeoenvironmental sequence is probably a touch more interesting than a modern cow - although of course without the specialists it'd still be a modern cow.... :face-stir:

[Potgeek]

I’ve come to this debate a bit late, but as I’m a pot person, I thought I’d share a few of my views. The issue of standards slipping seems be constantly on the agenda in all walks of pottery studies in British Archaeology, which worries me. Don’t get me wrong, there are some awful pot reports out there, and though good guidelines are important to have in place, bad and boring reports are not just confined to the practitioners that don’t use or follow them. Doing your descriptions of fabrics, forms etc., and providing tables is all very well and ‘proper’, but it’s doesn’t necessarily make a good pot report. On the whole, I think a specialist body we’re pretty great at generating lots of quantified data on this attribute or that (though we like swabbing over the ‘best’ approach to doing it), but most of the time it isn’t really doing much, we’re just list making. Sometimes I think we’re far too concerned with these things and forget to try and say something interesting about pots and roles they played. Sad really, because this wasn’t always the way. In the middle decades of the twentieth century people pretty much wrote prehistory from the study of pot, and came up with some really interesting ideas from working with assemblages that aren’t half as good as we now deal with on a day to day basis. My frustration is that expectations are so low from the profession - most of the time all people want is a spot date and summary. Is it any wonder that standards are falling when the demands we make of pottery and pottery analysis are so limited?

[pdurdin]

Potgeek, are you suggesting a high quality pot report ought to include some interpretation as well as dating information? This would also tie in with Redexile's points about pot specialists being more involved with the fieldwork (don't remember if it's in the thread or his linked article), right?

[RedEarth]

Spooling back a few pages through this discussion, regional type series have been mentioned but the manner in which the relevant collections are curated, made available and how universal they even are hasn't really. Having looked at the (an?) available online list (http://www.medievalpottery.org.uk/refcoll.htm) there certainly seem to be places that frankly don't have a reference collection (do they therefore have a type series?) or ones where accessing the reference collection is remarkably difficult (I got the impression in one case it was basically under a particular individual's bed - since they are basically the specialist in the area, good luck with being able to access that!)

Anyway, the point is - it's all well and good criticising the state of pot reports (and as I said initially, I do agree that there are some bloody awful pot reports out there), but how well organised is the availability of reference collections? If the answer is 'a bit slapdash really' then shouldn't this be sorted out, before the kettle starts calling the pot black? (sorry that wasn't meant to be a pun, assuming it can even be regarded as such)

[Potgeek]

Yes to interpretion and yes to knowing about the context the material comes from - and how it was recovered.You can say stuff by looking at pots as just 'things', but you can say a whole lot more by looking at pots are things that come from specific contexts. Generally speaking, the more info you get, the better the report.

[redexile]

My frustration is that expectations are so low from the profession - most of the time all people want is a spot date and summary. Is it any wonder that standards are falling when the demands we make of pottery and pottery analysis are so limited?

We've been saying this for a while now and have published a paper or two on it. The root of the problem is that a lot of the people who manage projects know nothing about pottery, and only seem to think that that's all it can do. Obviously, not every pottery assemblage can offer information about social and functional aspects of a site, but some can, others can offer info on the pottery itself which would prove useful in the future on other sites. I also agree with you that there are some truly terrible pottery reports out there, but the same could be said about reports on other aspects of an excavation, hence why we need a decent set of standards. I'm kind of old-fashioned in believing that the maximum amount of information should be extracted from the results of excavation, no matter what the level of site, eval, WB, whatever - again, this boils down to the ultimate question of who exactly are we doing these excavations for? Personally, I believe the answer to be 'everybody', which the current system does not allow. This was discussed in Mark Plucennik's BAR 'The Responsibilities of Archaeology'. I usually stay clear of internet fora, but there's no doubt that the same arguments/complaints have been going around for about 20 years, maybe longer, and precisely no progress has been made and things are getting worse, hence our paper (one of many!) essentially saying "this isn't working, here's why, can we try something else please?" Various people apart from us have suggested different, better ways of doing planning-related archaeology, but no-one in any sort of position to do something about it appears to be willing to do so, or is simply not listening.

[redexile]

Spooling back a few pages through this discussion, regional type series have been mentioned but the manner in which the relevant collections are curated, made available and how universal they even are hasn't really. Having looked at the (an?) available online list (http://www.medievalpottery.org.uk/refcoll.htm) there certainly seem to be places that frankly don't have a reference collection (do they therefore have a type series?) or ones where accessing the reference collection is remarkably difficult (I got the impression in one case it was basically under a particular individual's bed - since they are basically the specialist in the area, good luck with being able to access that!)

Well, yes, this is the problem we're trying to address by saying they should be on-line. The only one that is, Worcestershire, is curated by the DCA's in the county, at least one of which was originally a pot specialist. This seems to be the most sensible/accessible way to do it. That list on the MPRG website is slightly out of date BTW, but it is maintained by volunteers, so understandable. Mind you, at the moment, where type-series are maintained, most of them are looked after by volunteers as well

[RedEarth]

Well, yes, this is the problem we're trying to address by saying they should be on-line. The only one that is, Worcestershire, is curated by the DCA's in the county, at least one of which was originally a pot specialist. This seems to be the most sensible/accessible way to do it. That list on the MPRG website is slightly out of date BTW, but it is maintained by volunteers, so understandable. Mind you, at the moment, where type-series are maintained, most of them are looked after by volunteers as well

That would seem a good approach, although I can't see it being wheeled out across the board any time soon. In terms of physical regional reference collections, however, that does seem a bit random. Some exist, some don't some (perhaps most) are in museums, but not all. As with most things in archaeology, it needs sorting out.

[redexile]

That would seem a good approach, although I can't see it being wheeled out across the board any time soon. In terms of physical regional reference collections, however, that does seem a bit random. Some exist, some don't some (perhaps most) are in museums, but not all. As with most things in archaeology, it needs sorting out.

Indeed. Hence our suggestion for a way of doing it in the paper linked way back at the start of this thread!