I do hope it concerns only southern Greece Tania, for as you know sometimes young archaeologists...1st..2nd year students are used for such chores....not only in southern but also in northern Greece (let us discontinue this south-north divide as it is not very constructive!)and they, just like women from the nearby village, are just as disinterested in environmental work or even sometimes think that this work is not for them. As I have happened to train students on excavations, I have had interesting interaction ...Mind you women are trained too (so to speak) and paid, whereas students are often given travel, bed and board. So, I believe, it is a matter of who organises the environmental work (the weight falls on the coordinator!), the regard that the excavator has for the environmental work and is not just something which needs to be done for getting a grant (!) and is something that slows down the archaeology....many diverse factors to consider! Therefore, I do not see a south-north divide but rather a divide between excavator teams, coordinators of environmental collections and of course, later is the sorting stage...which is yet another 'thorn' in the basket!!

More things to consider, but good luck to you Anatolin ...bon courage...!
Anaya 
-----Original Message-----
From: Soultana-Maria Valamoti [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2014 9:58 PM
To: The archaeobotany mailing list; Anaya Sarpaki
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: testing the effects of having multiple sievers

What Anaya reports, and I assume concerns southern Greece mainly, is really worrying and perhaps partly the reason we have so little material from the south compared to the north of the country where trained archaeologists undertake flotation in the field and are paid for this (equally important!!).

Ferran, wish you lots of success in your new projects!!

Tania

Quoting Anaya Sarpaki <[log in to unmask]>:

> Dear Anatolin,
>
>
>
> This is a very worthwhile experiment you are doing and I am sure it 
> also applies to the water flotation on dry soil. I have had this idea 
> that one of the many factors affecting the results could be water 
> flotation done by various operators but, unfortunately, a quantifiable 
> experiment was never implemented and this might be a whole Masters 
> thesis I believe…. Some people are more gentle or make sure they 
> retrieve all the floating material from the fine sieves and others, 
> who are not sure of the reasons why we need to be so careful, just 
> retrieve mechanically what they see with one glance…. In Greece, 
> unfortunately, very often untrained people –high school children, 
> archaeology students that have not been trained in environmental 
> studies or even plain women found in nearby villages- are paid to 
> water float and are just shown how it is done without showing them the 
> results of what we need to be found…..i.e. taking them to a lab. and showing them what comes out of their floated material…..
>
>
>
> Well done! We would love to know what the results are.
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Anaya
>
>
>
> From: The archaeobotany mailing list 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Ferran Antolin
> Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2014 7:35 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: testing the effects of having multiple sievers
>
>
>
>
> Dear Kath,
> Thanks for your reply. I respond to the list (unlike with previous 
> e-mails), since this might be of interest for more people.
> We have always had big concerns on the sieving techniques applied, 
> especially when uncharred remains are present in the samples. After 
> some tests, it was decided that the wash-over technique (sensu Kenward 
> et al
> 1980) gave the best results. And these were even better when the 
> samples were first deep frozen and then thawed. See literature 
> attached and references therein for further insight. But even using 
> this very gentle technique, differences between trained sievers might 
> be quite relevant (as observed in the paper by Petra Zibulski et al., 
> sent before). For this reason, in the framework of a large project 
> that is currently running (the Parkhaus-Opéra site in Zürich) for 
> which c.300 large (4-8 litres) samples are being sieved and several 
> sievers working simultaneously are needed, we tested their results to 
> see how comparable the resulting data are. And so we
> wonder: did anybody else ever test this?
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Ferran
>
>
>
>
>



Tania Valamoti,
Assistant Professor,
Dept. of Archaeology,
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,
54 124 Thessaloniki,
Greece

Tel: ++30 2310 997310
Fax: ++302310 997278
http://www.hist.auth.gr/en/Teaching-Staff/Soyltana-Maria-Valamoti