With apologies for the late contribution on this subject

No mater what it’s target audience was this was a very poor piece of TV. 
Each episode of the series so far has been just as bad. Not only have we 
seen poor TV but also very poor archaeology, which on each episode only 
really appears in the last 10 minutes. The overall impression with the Parys 
Mountain episode was that it was far to dangerous to work underground, and 
that anyway it was all about to collapse and extreme archaeology had done 
all the work that was necessary.

This is a very specialist form of archaeology and this team did not have the 
knowledge or experience to tackle such as site. They misrepresented a very 
important site and did nothing to increase the knowledge and understanding 
of prehistoric mining on Parys Mountain or the equally important post 
medieval phase of mining. Rather than show people the potential of 
underground archaeology this reinforced the misguided view that this kind of 
work is best left to mining history groups, who are the only people daft 
enough to visit such sites. As to whether NAMHO should let is pass without 
comment, I will be continuing to promote the study of underground 
archaeology and the development of methodologies and good practice 
guidelines, and I will use Extreme Archaeology as an example of poor 
practice.

A second question raised as a result of this program was software for the 3D 
modelling of mines. Bruno’s suggestion of Limelight is fine if you have 
access to a mac, but as I am sure most of us work on PC’s that is no good. 
My suggestion would be Compass (http://www.fountainware.com/compass/), this 
was developed for the modelling of caves and works very well for mines.

It costs $25 but is available to download and try for free. It is very east 
to use and has many advantages over the other suggestion of CAD programs. 
First is the ease of use, data is entered just as you would record it 
underground, distance, bearing, and inclination, as well as up, down, left, 
and right measurements. There are also a wide range of output options that 
you would not get with cad.

One major advantage, if you have a big budget project, is that ESRI who 
produce Arcview Gis, have developed a set of tools that allow compass files 
to be imported into Arcview and Arcview 3D analyst. This allows 3D 
underground surveys to be combined with digital elevation models and surface 
surveys. Unfortunatly Arcview and Arcview 3D analyst cost several thousand 
pounds and are probably out of the reach of the average club project.

Martin Roe


Conservation Officer NAMHO
National Association of Mining History Organisations http://www.namho.org

Lead Mining in the Yorkshire Dales
http://www.mroe.freeserve.co.uk

The Industrial Heritage of Calderdale
http://www.halifaxcouriertoday.co.uk/ftpinc/calderheritage

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