Dear all,

Having watched the progress of work at Alderley Edge, been 
involved on the fringe once or twice, having been into mines, etc. 
etc., perhaps I could make the following points as a professional 
archaeologist. Sorry if some peoples' ears burn, but perhaps they 
should be!

1) From personal inspection the quality of archaeological 
excavation appears very poor, with no obvious survey or 
archaeological-type recording taking place; this does create doubt 
that the work will ever be written up or at least displayed in a 
usable form.

Would the mine diggers welcome technical archaeological 
assistance from archaeologists (not nicking their project, merely 
helping to achieve a common goal). From the example I saw, I feel 
not; please correct me if I am wrong!

I personally hope that Alderley Edge becomes a Scheduled 
Ancient Monument. That way the importance of the site becomes 
recognised, and excavations can only occur with permission from 
English Heritage who will expect qualified archaeologists to be 
involved and will monitor the excavations, surely a better set up 
than the current arrangement (after all, we ALL want to see high 
quality research done there and hence we should all be supporting 
moves to ensure this).

2) Safety. It makes me laugh to see the discussion of safety that 
has been on this list in the last couple of days. From what I have 
seen at Alderley Edge myself the general awareness of safety 
regarding the diggers themselves and the general public above is, 
well, inadequate. The examples below should illustrate the point:

a) invisible warning signs at surface
b) young children in excavation, not fully supervised, and unable to 
make an emergency escape on own accord
c) no proper attention to escape routes
d) no barrier around entrance point
e) people underground with no head protection
f) no backup lighting system. Not even a torch and certainly no 
festoon so how one is supposed to see in an accident is 
questionable.
g) At times only one person in excavation. What happened to the 
good old-fashioned principle of two to look out for each other?
h) The diggers had no idea where they were in the workings; they 
said so. Perhaps a little dodgy when digging towards a known 
shaft, or up towards entrances within the public area?

I could go on, but I suspect these issues won't be addressed and I 
would rather see common sense applied in the first place.

What is the overall safety framework that these excavations are 
supposed to be following?

Do we know that all the workings were open simultaneously and 
not partially backfilled as work went on? Might opening up an entire 
honeycomb close to the surface create an instability hazard for the 
future? Or are the diggers going to fill everything in again so once 
they have had the fortune to see the interior no-one else will be 
able to, like the interested public, other cavers, hell, even 
archaeologists?


3) Removal of artefacts is an act of cultural vandalism. OK, so in 
the 50's and 60's all sorts of inappropriate treatments of mine 
workings were going on, like blasting entrances, and lots of 
perfectly laudable efforts were made to recover material. However, 
time has moved on and all those artefacts removed need to be 
catalogued and the details made available. It would be nice to have 
some at least of the material returned to appropriate museums and 
landowners (like the National Trust).

How many less-obvious mining related items were removed, like 
pottery, hammerstones, etc.. Any, none? After all, these are the 
things that help us date workings...!

Rant over!

Seriously though, we should be addressing these issues so lets 
discuss them and maybe progress will be made!

Regards to all.

Martin

________________________________
Martin Roseveare
ArchaeoPhysica Ltd.
Phone: 07050 369789
Fax:   07050 369790
email: [log in to unmask]
web:   http://www.archaeophysica.co.uk


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