Re: The difficulties of archaeology

Doug Weller schrieb:
On Wed, 12 Sep 2007 17:55:47 +0200, in sci.archaeology, Uwe Müller wrote:

Digger schrieb:
"imipak" <imipak@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1189540321.843232.121720@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
So what is the secret others have so obviously succeeded in using to
get people to look?
FUNDING!
If you can convince somebody to come up with the funds, you can pretty much research anything you want. The trick is trying to convince the people with the momey that they really NEED to know about your pet subject.

Incidentally. You state that scientists hate doing the laborious background research. In my experience that isn't the case and there are some of us out here who actually LOVE doing that bit!


Here in Germany nothing gets excavated, unless it is threatened with destruction in the immediate future. And lots of stuff, that would have to be researched, gets destroyed without proper research because of a lack of personal and funds.

Which is more or less true in the UK. This is not necessarily a bad
thing, as our techniques and tools get better with time and we get more
out of excavations as time goes on.

Digging can be seen as a one-time never to be repeated experiment -- get
it wrong and you don't get a second chance. There is rarely anything so
important to dig for that it can't wait if it isn't in danger.

> snip >

Well, yes.

But, ...

When personell and funds are scarce, the more I know about a kind of site, the less funding and staff I need for the excavation of a further example, about to be be destroyed.

IMHO it would be worth it to research exemplary sites for at least some periods. It would save on the costs for recording the remains of some thousandth example of something well known, and sharpen the eye for unexpected, unknown or unexplained features.

But it is true, that building contractors usually destroy only part of a site, while archaeologists, if let loose, will destroy it completely. It is not an easy question to answer.

have fun

Uwe Mueller
.

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