I have had some success with using a  camera with a long remote cable on
the end of a pole. It had a wide angle lense and macro focusing so I could
get a shot of about 2m x 2m in a trench only 1m wide and 5m deep. The
complicated part is logging the images in the right sequence and measuring
for the camea position so the mosaic can be put together in the right order.

I guess a video camera rigged up in the same way would give you a real time
look at stratigraphy, but it would need some form of visible reference
(tape-measures and numbered tags?) hung in the trench if you wanted a
permanent record that could be tied back into a site/stratigraphy plan.

Gary Vines

Melbourne's Living Museum of the West
P.O. BOX 60 Highpoint City, 3032
Victoria, Australia
ph. +61 3 93183544
fax. +61 3 93181039
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www.livingmuseum.org.au