a few weeks ago, in an e-mail dealing with sutton hoo, dr. c.m. mills had this
to say about single context planning/excavation -

        Digs tend to look messy- a single context recording system has
led to a single context excavation system.

and hodder combines the statement that

        we may dig rigidly in single contexts because we are using a 'single
context recording system'

with a criticism that

        in recent decades it often seems as if the recording process has come to
determine the digging process

i would argue that the latter has always been the case (we dug profile trenches
and wheelerian boxes because we used to do our documentation in 2D, and usually
in the vertical plane to record relative chronological relationships) and wonder
- if the above are meant to be criticisms of single context planning, what
alternatives are there?


geoff carver
http://home.t-online.de/home/gcarver/
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