Fellow Colleagues,
Perhaps we should take a leaf out of the geologists' book. They have had similar problems with absolute dating, biological periodisation, and depositional regime. As a consequence they have BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC, CHRONOSTRATIGRAPHIC and LITHOSTRATIGRAPHIC units. These rarely occur at the same time or over the same period.
I quite like the idea that things do not fit into the neat pigeon holes we make, and it would be stupid for an SMR to have just a single "period" field. When we come to re-configure the North Yorks SMR, it is likely to contain several fields, including culture period, origin date, end date, local term, and possibly fields for resolution and alternative date. I look forward to the conclusions of this e-conference.
N Campling, County Archaeologist.
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