Types of Fieldwork

The following is a summary of the main types of fieldwork that that are undertaken in Worcestershire.

Desk-Top Assessments

The first stage in many archaeological projects is to collate the existing information that exists about a particular site. This will be used as the basis for devising a strategy for any future work at the site. A key element of this is the information contained within the County Historic Environment Record. Other important information may come from a study of aerial photographs.

Watching Briefs and Salvage Recording

The most minimal form of fieldwork is simply to seek permission for an archaeologist to observe groundworks on a building site. Typically this will be arranged through an Access Condition on a planning permission but may also cover observation on other types of site or activity where the archaeologist is totally reliant on the co-operation of the landowner. A rapid record is made of any discoveries without holding up the development work in any way. A watching brief might be undertaken in an area where little information has been gathered in the past, or where the development is so small that it is not reasonable to require any larger input. The main purpose is to establish whether any archaeology exists on the site. This information can then be used to prepare better advice for any neighbouring developments in the future.

This is similar to a watching brief but with the big difference that a planning condition might place the responsibility for appointing a suitable archaeological contractor and of funding such work with the developer.

The speed with which such work has to be undertaken, and the need to take account of health and safety issues when working on a building site, means that special skills have had to be developed to extract the maximum degree of information.

A contingency allowance of time and resources may have been agreed between the archaeologist and developer to allow for the possibility that significant remains might be found on site.

A decision might be made at the initial planning application stage to recommend salvage recording, or this might follow the results of an Evaluation.

Evaluation

An evaluation may consist of a package different types of work, following an initial desk-top assessment. The evaluation will be designed to provide sufficient information to give accurate advice to the local authorities before the Councillors have to decide to approve, or reject, a planning application. The responsibility for commissioning and funding such an evaluation lies with the developer. Typically the project might consist of one or more of the following: fieldwalking, geophysical survey, sample excavation. Most excavation that is currently undertaken in England is in the form of small-scale evaluation trenches.

These are not research excavations and they have limited goals; for example, they aim to establish the presence/absence of any archaeology and assessing its significance. From the results of the evaluation the County Archaeologist will then recommend future policy towards the site.

Decisons will range from deciding to take no further action, recommending a watching brief or salvage recording, suggesting changes to design, further excavation or, in extremely rare cases, even recommending that the application be refused.

Where an evaluation reveals the existence of an important archaeological site, the priority is to try to find ways of avoiding further damage. Typically, this might be achieved by moving a proposed building away from critical archaeology or altering the foundation design. Sometimes, however, it is agreed that the best course of action is to accept that the site, or part of it, will be destroyed but to at least ensure that at least an adequate record will be made of it. This may lead to a large excavation.

In other circumstances a research excavation might be organised on a non-threatened site to try to understand a particular part of our heritage and also to provide training for the next generation of archaeologists.

Large-scale excavations are particularly important because they offer the best chance to compare large assemblages of finds, recover complete plans of structures and also to understand the relationship between neighbouring blocks of property. They are, however, expensive to undertake - not just in the fieldwork but in the complex process of analysing, and publishing, the results.