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Stonehenge....
I'm just......
I get that people see 'stonehenge' and 'road' and start screaming but it's.....this version of the bypass is the least damaging?
Stonehenge and it's environs are also easily the MOST recorded and explored archaeological site in the UK, followed by Orkney, then Shetland.
I am currently working as a commercial archaeologist in the UK - I have been aware of commmercial archaeology since before university.
I am actually so mad that Stonehenge is the hill people are going to fight for.
Heathrow terminal five - they did actual excavation on like 0.5% of that site, the rest got geophysed and that was it. They found things they had no record of anywhere else in the country at the time. They got noted but covered by terminal 5. No excavation, absolutely no finds recovered.
HS2? They will excavate like 15% at most of that route.
Crossrail in London, it's pretty much just the cemeteries that legally have to be moved. The same is true of most road projects.
I live in the North West of England, we know almost nothing about the past besides surface remains and written evidence. There are lots of new roads, you know how many of them had ANY archaeological investigation?
It's only guidance that any investigation gets done, and that's a desk based assessment followed by investigation of generally at most 5% of an area (we had to write up a proposal at uni, and were told that any more than like 10 test trenches would be too many, so you had to do a desk based assessment and GUESS where the best places to look for things would be).
The bypass moves a road that currently runs straight though the cursus (which was built before the guidance existed...so yeah) and actually reduces a lot of things.
And again, Stonehenge has had more attention archaeologically than 99.9% of the rest of the UK.
The M6 in Cumbria runs right next to one stone circle, a motte and bailey and through the middle of another stone circle, we known almost nothing about any of those sites besides tha they exist - if people are going to get up in arms about stonehenge, they need to do it more about other places that we know almost nothing about and that knowing more about would be really really refreshing.
People also need to keep in mind that in a world were money matters, archaeological investigation costs money, adds to the overall bill for any project. The government funded projects typically get more archaeological investigation these days, private ones.....yeah o.o
/end archaeology rant.
I get that people see 'stonehenge' and 'road' and start screaming but it's.....this version of the bypass is the least damaging?
Stonehenge and it's environs are also easily the MOST recorded and explored archaeological site in the UK, followed by Orkney, then Shetland.
I am currently working as a commercial archaeologist in the UK - I have been aware of commmercial archaeology since before university.
I am actually so mad that Stonehenge is the hill people are going to fight for.
Heathrow terminal five - they did actual excavation on like 0.5% of that site, the rest got geophysed and that was it. They found things they had no record of anywhere else in the country at the time. They got noted but covered by terminal 5. No excavation, absolutely no finds recovered.
HS2? They will excavate like 15% at most of that route.
Crossrail in London, it's pretty much just the cemeteries that legally have to be moved. The same is true of most road projects.
I live in the North West of England, we know almost nothing about the past besides surface remains and written evidence. There are lots of new roads, you know how many of them had ANY archaeological investigation?
It's only guidance that any investigation gets done, and that's a desk based assessment followed by investigation of generally at most 5% of an area (we had to write up a proposal at uni, and were told that any more than like 10 test trenches would be too many, so you had to do a desk based assessment and GUESS where the best places to look for things would be).
The bypass moves a road that currently runs straight though the cursus (which was built before the guidance existed...so yeah) and actually reduces a lot of things.
And again, Stonehenge has had more attention archaeologically than 99.9% of the rest of the UK.
The M6 in Cumbria runs right next to one stone circle, a motte and bailey and through the middle of another stone circle, we known almost nothing about any of those sites besides tha they exist - if people are going to get up in arms about stonehenge, they need to do it more about other places that we know almost nothing about and that knowing more about would be really really refreshing.
People also need to keep in mind that in a world were money matters, archaeological investigation costs money, adds to the overall bill for any project. The government funded projects typically get more archaeological investigation these days, private ones.....yeah o.o
/end archaeology rant.
no subject
But it's like hey, what about those other ancient Roman/Celtic cairns the guy unearthed in his yard? Oh no, we don't care about that. I guess it might be a side effect of being in places that're not the US and you can go digging in any direction and have a chance of finding something that's >500 years old, though?