For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By Pete L
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1870870
eltonioni wrote:Edit, I found the report of the investigation.

Table 1: Quantification of the fieldwork paper archive (evaluation and excavation)

Bulk finds (e.g. 1 bag, 1 box, 0.5 box 0.5 of a box ) <1 box
Registered finds (number of) 0
Flots and environmental remains from bulk samples 5
Palaeoenvironmental specialists samples (e.g. columns, prepared slides) 0
Waterlogged wood 0
Wet sieved environmental remains from bulk samples 0


All that time, money and effort for an 85 page report detailing 68 trenches for the grand total of zero finds. Sodding archaeologists and planners, it's licenced, council sponsored extortion. Don't get me started on Section 106 Agreements.


Section 106 is how our village gets any new facilities such as play areas for the resulting offspring from new homes - hardly robbery. At least until the town council started trying to get their mitts on it.
#1870891
eltonioni wrote:But, your mystery is solved Rob :?


Indeed. Many thanks. :thumleft:

Rob P
#1870895
Pete L wrote:Section 106 is how our village gets any new facilities such as play areas for the resulting offspring from new homes - hardly robbery. At least until the town council started trying to get their mitts on it.

Don't disagree in principal that local people should benefit from better amenities. Time was that developer contributions were in the form of a Section 106 Agreement and they were hypothecated to a specific thing; playground, pedestrian crossing, tennis court, whatever. At the very least they were required to be spent in the area they were generated by development so that the new residents and existing affected residents would have the benefit.

Since the advent of Community Infrastructure Levy the bulk of the money now goes into a general council pot, except in exceptional circumstances where something very significant (road, school, etc) is needed. To my mind it's locals who miss out if the council has some favoured hobby horse they want to fund. It might be more of a problem in cities where you can't easily collar your neighbour who also happens to be on the council.

The more we spend on pointless archeology expeditions for mates of the council, the less cash there is for locals.
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1870902
Charles Hunt wrote:
PeteSpencer wrote:The number of archaeological 'hits' from our dig in 2015 was zippo too...................... :roll:


Conversely, extremely rare crested newts seem to be found on every flipping site in the SE.


The newt problem has apparently been solved by the establishment of a newt colony near Peterborough where inconvenient bplanning busting newts are carted off to.

(According to the Bat and Newt Man that came and inspected our proposed development site in 2015)
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By JAFO
#1870913
So, do those of you grumbling about the archaeology suggest they just bung some houses in right through the previously undiscovered Roman villa or Bronze Age burials or whatever else could have been there?
#1870919
JAFO wrote:So, do those of you grumbling about the archaeology suggest they just bung some houses in right through the previously undiscovered Roman villa or Bronze Age burials or whatever else could have been there?


It's how the logic of social media works JAFO:
"The survey found nothing so it was a waste of time. Therefore any such survey is a waste of time."
No I don't understand it either.

I'm encouraged a bit by occasionally seeing displays of artefacts found when a site was developed - Peterborough services spring to mind.

It's worth understanding that the developer would far rather any archeology was found well before construction work starts rather than having to call a halt mid way through the ground work when men and plant are already paid for. Less disruptive to the programme.
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By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1870928
JAFO wrote:So, do those of you grumbling about the archaeology suggest they just bung some houses in right through the previously undiscovered Roman villa or Bronze Age burials or whatever else could have been there?


To be brutally honest in my case yes.
In the twilight of our lives Mrs S and my retirement plans to build a retirement home would have been totally f*cked.

As it was they did find something : the footings of a 19th century bone mill along with antimony and cadmium necessitating half a metre of replacement topsoil: a heart stopping and expensive moment.

So from now on , call it selfish if you like , but Mrs S and I come first.

I’m through with being green, paying over the odds for organic veg stuff which is usually wilted and cr ap in the box and as soon as I can I’m using up my banked weeks and jetting off to our timeshare in the middle of the Atlantic .

And drive my 3.2 litre comfortably appointed gas guzzler till it drops to bits around me . :thumright:

Edit to add

The site had already been built on twice in the last two hundred years - why should we hold up our retirement plans ( and inter alia those of the four other families that the development of our lowly acre provided homes for ) on the off chance there might be a bit of broken Roman pottery or a 2d (denarii) piece ffs? :roll:
Last edited by PeteSpencer on Thu Sep 16, 2021 10:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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#1870943
@JAFO there's usually a rough flowchart to this. Roman villas tend to be known or at least suspected. Rarely do they turn up as a surprise in a digger bucket.

So what happens when a planning application is submitted is that the statutory and designated consultees are, well, consulted. The council's archeology liaison officer will see the lists of applications and will be consulted if there's any likelihood of archaeology.

At that point the planning officer will ask the developer for a desktop archaeological study. So they employ some consultant, hopefully a tame one, to write a report about the history of the site and relevant archeology matters. In fairness I'm personally quite interested but that's not the point.

The desktop goes to the council's liaison officer and sometimes they get very excited and ask for more or maybe even a real life site investigation. That is conditioned in a consent to be undertaken in accordance with the consultant's recommendations. Sometimes it's a quick look one afternoon, other times it becomes the Jorvic excavation and holds things up for years.

I sometimes joke that if we find something in a hole that we don't like, we dig a bigger hole. It is meant as a joke but it shows the frustration of unexpected things in the ground. A half decent and responsible developer would usually have a good idea of what they are letting themselves in for well in advance of the trowel troublers getting involved.

Archaeology on developments is basically a job creation scheme that adds bugger all to the sum of human knowledge. For example, I've had a few projects where we've had to have the clay pipe collectors in to scrape at, record and write reports on foundations of long demolished Georgian and Victorian factories and slums which we actually have plans and photographs of. Then we dig them up and turn them into hardcore.

These reports are filed away never to be read again unless it's for a CV or to win a commercial contract with mugs like us who won't get planning consents unless we employ the mates of the council's archeology liaison officer. Rob's photo seems to show just such a waste of time and money but no doubt it paid a lot of wages for otherwise unemployable ditch diggers. Other people may have different experiences and opinions but that's how I've found it usually works.

The two hundred families who will live in the houses are paying for it, with added mortgage interest, and I just don't think that's right.
#1870964
The irony is, if the field wasn't up for development and remained an arable field, we wouldn't know what was under it anyway. Roman kazi, gold coins, crated Spitfires, we just wouldn't know or care.

Maybe we should dig up every farmers field just in case! :D
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By PeteSpencer
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#1870967
Sooty25 wrote:The irony is, if the field wasn't up for development and remained an arable field, we wouldn't know what was under it anyway. Roman kazi, gold coins, crated Spitfires, we just wouldn't know or care.

Maybe we should dig up every farmers field just in case! :D


That's what detectorists are for.......................... :lol:
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