On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Iain Stuart wrote:
>
> Apart from arbitrary levels my biggest complaint is small holes. When I
> first dug in New South Wales a large excavation was 2m by 2m and typical
> excavations were 1m by 0.5m. I was told this was to preserve the integrity
> of the site for the "future" but as the site concerned was being salvage
> excavated I was not impressed. Needless to say all that was recovered from
> the site were stone tools and some charcoal and Aboriginal sites are still
> considered not to have "features" in them.
>
> The open area method and the Harris matrix are in my opinion the way to go
> if you are considering anything more than testing to see if anything is
> there.
>
AMEN IAIN!!!! I really HATE digging little holes in big sites. I nearly
lost my faith in archaeology altogether many years ago after listening to
the umpteenth meeting paper in which the author drew widespread
conclusions about the past from a total of 2 cups of potsherds excavated
from 13 shovel-tests plus one 1 meter square...gimme a break!!!!
Dan