Paul Courtney schrieb:
> Geoff carver wrote: problem here in germany (and possibly elsewhere in europe)
> is that too many people are still excavating things like medieval town centres
> using arbitrary levels!!! they don't know about stratigraphic methods because
> they only know what their professors told them, and the professors only know
> about profiles and  plans a la Mortimer Wheeler
>   >>
> Well they clearly only looked at the pickies and didn't read Wheeler
 
think one of the main problems is that they don't read much of anything, unless
its written in german, and even then... we're finishing the german translation
of harris now: people know the name, basically recognize the matrix, but don't
see any need for it, or for excavating stratigraphically, or for preprinted
context sheets, or... basically my criticisms right now are going to be
something along the lines of gross generalizations; still collecting the data,
but the situation is not good; standards stuck way back in the 1950s in a lot of
 
cases - which is what i mean by "wheeler": plans and profiles, being really
what he's famous for...
 
 as
> despite all his faults he (and the usually forgotten first Mrs Wheeler) and
> the underated Kathleen Kenyon developed modern stratigraphic excavation as we
> know it. The basic principles were established by the 1940s. However, modern
> urban archaeology was an indirect German invention- as Grimes, Noel Hume and
> Oswald developed it on London bomb sites- so they should no better (Actually
> I'm normally a good European but it is the World Cup- that's football my
> American friends).
> paul courtney, Leicester, Uk
 
geoff carver
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