The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 308 • Timothy Darvill
• Assessment. This represents the first substantial piece of work in the management cycle,
usually desk-based, and will most likely be undertaken according to a project design or
specification established at the appraisal stage.
• Field evaluation. This stage involves the close examination of the archaeological resource,
sometimes through excavation, to determine, as far as practicable, the principal physical
characteristics of the quality, extent, survival, condition and fragility of the deposits, as well as
details of form, interpretation, date and archaeological potential.
• Strategy formulation. This stage involves the construction of an archaeological management
or mitigation strategy or detailed project design of some kind, based on the information and
conclusions documented by the field evaluation.
• Decision. Here a competent authority will decide whether the strategy as formulated should
proceed or not. In the context of a development proposal, this stage will primarily be through
the planning system, although where scheduled ancient monuments are involved, the decision
will also be through the scheduled monument consent system. In the case of research
programmes, the project design will probably be the basis of funding approvals.
• Strategy development. Using comments and information from the decision phase, the strategy
itself can be developed and expanded, with more detail added if necessary.
• Strategy implementation. In archaeological terms, this is the most visible element of the work,
as it involves what most people would regard as the real business of archaeology: excavations,
surveys, technical studies, and so on. In the case of a development scheme, this often happens
in three phases:
Pre-construction works: preparatory works for the preservation or conservation of deposits, and
the total or selective excavation of areas before groundworks get under way. Intra-construction
works: small-scale excavations, watching briefs, and recorded observations undertaken in parallel
with groundworks and the activities of construction contractors on the site.
Post-construction works: archaeological operations carried out after the development is complete,
including on-site operations such as the establishment and maintenance of long-term
conservation or preservation measures, and off-site operations such as the analysis of finds
and records from earlier phases of archaeological work, the conservation of fragile finds, the
preparation of general and academic reports and accounts of the work, and the deposition of
the archive and finds in an appropriate museum.
For research programmes, the implementation stage will comprise the execution in series
or in parallel of the various pieces of data-collection, followed by an analysis and reporting
stage.
• Review. The final stage in the cycle is a review of what has been done and whether it has
achieved what was intended. In some cases, this stage may last several years, with regular
monitoring to see that aspects of the scheme are working.
In all these stages, professionalism is increasingly important. Since its creation in 1982, the Institute
of Field Archaeologists has been concerned with the promotion and raising of professional
standards. Its membership, which represents over one-third of all professional archaeologists in
the UK, work to an agreed set of ‘standards’ for archaeological projects. However, what no
legislation, policy, guidance or standards can deal with is the political and emotional aspects of
the process. Both are surprisingly important. In the case of planning decisions, it is not the
professional advisers who make the decisions but elected representatives as council members
who sit on planning committees. It is these groups who ultimately decide whether archaeological
considerations must give way to social, economic or ideological pressures, or vice versa; and the