Dear All,
Sorry John, but all this talk of keeping every last bit of information (material, written, digital, etc) about interventions is pie in the sky. There isn't the time or the money in all the world to store, manage, and analyse the terabytes of info now being collected. Museums do not keep every last material item, and I do not see why we should keep every last bit of information. Good scientific enquiry is always characterised by selection of data (including personal or reflective data) to create robust explanations out of the myriad of conflicting and confusing archaeological data. Understanding is not generated by total data collection, but by asking questions of selected data and generating new data sets to support that understanding of past human behaviour. Even if we had a thousand years of digital records of ethno-archaeo-methodology (ie 'what activity was watched and what were the light conditions'), I doubt very much that questioning this data would really help us to understand how humans came to be as they are today. ((Surely cultural dynamics has a far greater impact on cultural evolution than the conditions of discovery or recording !)) Yes, there are many questions that could be asked, but real practical archaeological work is all about keeping matters in perspective, determining priorities, and making choices or selections to concentrate on that which is most productive for intellectual inquiry. Perhaps I'm out of step: if some archaeologists want to fritter away the immense opportunity to understand human history by concentrating on the trivia of total data collection and management, well, I can't stop them. But don't expect all archaeologists to agree with that course.
Cheers, Neil
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