Mike Gill wrote:

>Archaeologists are attracted by the accuracy, and then plaster hatchers all over their drawings because they cannot use a dumpy level or handle the calculations needed to produce and draw contours.<

 
Mike,

There was much in your diatribe for us archaeologists to engage with but this point is particularly ill-informed bollocks.  We use hachures (not hatchers)on plans because they are the only way to depict the 3-dimensional relationships of earthworks on a single drawing. This enables analysis and can reveal chronologies between separate elements.  By surveying tops and bottoms of slopes each lump and bump can be depicted as an individual entity which contour plans totally fail to do.  Some slopes can be as little as 0.2 m high so I’d hate to have to put enough spot heights over a large site to have contours at that interval for them to show up. 

There is a huge difference between an 'analytical survey' and an 'illustration' and you should not see survey just as a means of creating illustrations to back up your historically derived interpretations but as an additional piece of analyses in its own right. The idea that a plan based on previously published maps, with information from various other dubious sources and sketched detail, or the unpredictable accuracy of hand-held GPS, can in any way compare to an accurate measured survey is false. How can you bemoan the practice of using unchecked secondary written sources yet advocate this re-hash approach to survey? 

As to accuracy, this can be achieved with the most basic of survey kit over a small area, as long is it is used with competence, but if you’re surveying a large site the traverse framework has to be accurate for  all the features surveyed to be in the right place, which they have to be for your analysis to be sound, and the best and easiest way to do this is with a theodolite, however you record the detail. But, the main reason for using a theodolite is speed. If you want to survey a large complicated site in steeply sloping woodland covered in brambles and thicket with a tape measure and a dumpy level that’s fine, but for me life’s too short.  GPS will not work on about 50% of the sites I survey because of tree coverage. We can always cherry-pick the ones on open moorland I suppose but that wouldn’t give a very representative sample. Your broad brush statement that we (archaeologists) can't use a dumpy level or are incapable of doing the maths is a little insulting  - but I'm not bitter. 
 
As an archaeologist with an interest in mines I realise that I will always be perceived by some 'old salts' of the mining history fraternity as a Johnny-cum-lately because I've never worked in't pit, or that I can't possibly understand engine houses cos I'm not Cornish. I shall always defer to those with far greater mining knowledge than I but I do ask that you take the trouble to properly understand what our techniques have to offer; you might find we could be quite useful. 

Many thanks for livening up the list - its been an interesting few hours.
 

Regards


Phil Newman
(English Heritage Archaeological Investigation and Survey team, Exeter)