Thanks Nick,
I've taken the liberty of dividing your response up into different messages,
as there are several threads here which I think it is well worth pursuing.
(Incidentally, it is taken as read that *all* opinions stated on FISH are
those of individuals rather than their employers / societies etc unless
clearly stated otherwise).
On data standards for field archaeology you wrote..
> this could be something that increasingly we may
> want to consider. It may be that what is needed is not how to
> import these datasets into HER's (purely from logistics) but
> some sort of standardised way for a: these sorts of databases
> (Finds, Context etc) to be formatted so that B; HER Officers
> can fairly easily extract the sorts of data they might want
> into their database. I am not sure if what I have suggested
> is the best way, but this issue would be more pressing (I
> think) than linking to e.g. Libraries etc
I agree. As far as I am aware there is no widely used standardised way of
capturing this data. There *is* in my experience a lot of commonality
between e.g. context recording systems used in different units, but when you
get down to the detail I suspect there is a lot of work needed to produce a
nationally accepted standard.
In addition to HER users who want to add the data to their database, there
would also be the gain in being able to search across records provided by
different contractors, e.g. to find 'Roman well fills with fish bone
samples'.
There wouild be a lot of work here, but if this is identified as a priority,
then this is what we should be aiming for.
As a discusssion point, I have at my elbow a Procedures manual kindly
donated by a UK unit. It includes, in addition to the Context recording form
a large number of forms used in preparing a site archive, including:
Site drawing list
Photographic Record sheet
Film Record index
Artefact sample list
Registered artefacts list (what I used to call 'small finds' - I was never
sure why!)
Ecofact sampling list and record sheet
Fieldwalking record sheet
Watching brief recording sheet
Human skeleton record sheet
Cremation deposit record sheet
Masonry record sheet
Timber record sheet
This just gives an indication of the range of data routinely collected. I'm
sure there are others...
Ed
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