Archaeology: Hidden treasure

[Melvadius]

A recent article in Nature covers a lot of the issues surrounding 'grey literature' which are unpublished or at least generally innaccessible archaeological reports.

 

The explosion in commercial archaeology has brought a flood of information. The problem now is figuring out how to find and use this unpublished literature, reports Matt Ford.

 

Archaeologists are used to gathering data by scratching in the dirt. But when Richard Bradley set out to write a new prehistory of Britain in 2004, he unearthed his most important finds while wearing sandals and a sweater rather than work boots and a hard hat.

 

Bradley is one of a growing number of academics in the United Kingdom who are doing their digging in the masses of unpublished 'grey literature' generated when commercial archaeologists are brought in to excavate before any sort of construction.

 

Bradley, a professor at the University of Reading, travelled around the country, visiting the offices of contract archaeological teams and local planning officials. There, he unearthed dozens of reports showing that settlements in England had remained strong during the Bronze Age and had not suffered a population crash, as academics had long thought.

 

"I became aware that what I was teaching would be out of date without looking at the grey literature," says Bradley.

 

For the past 20 years, Britain has been at the centre of a revolution in the funding and practice of archaeology. The shift was spurred by a 1990 change in policy that requires local governments to consider how construction projects will affect archaeological remains. That policy has essentially forced public and private entities to pay for archaeological assessments before they start laying a road, constructing an office building or engaging in other projects that disturb the ground.

 

In many ways the law has achieved its aim, helping to preserve relics that otherwise would have been destroyed. But at the same time, it has created problems for academics, who have struggled to keep up with the avalanche of new data, which some argue are hard to access.

 

Similar concerns have emerged in other countries that have enacted equivalent laws. But it's in the crowded British Isles