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Trees... Why Does It Have To Be Trees...
Oct. 28th, 2011 07:12 pmForget snakes, bugs, rats, etc. If there's one thing that represents an archaeologist's worst nightmare, it's trees.
We've completed three days of our archaeological survey, and progress has been, um, satisfactory. We've completed Total Station Surveys of both farmsteads, and two elevation drawings (including one of the more difficult elevations. I'd hoped to be slightly further ahead by now, but the second of the two surveys has been a nightmare (just as the Great Surveyor predicted...)
Picture the scene. A ruinous farmsteading on a 'C' shaped plan, with the farmhouse in the E separated from the adjacent range (?barns) by a low wall (defining the garden, perhaps. It's set within an enclosure, with an additional enclosure set to the E, within which two refugee deciduous trees (probably at least a hundred years old) still survive. All this required to be surveyed, including the trees, which were after all part of the 19th century steading, and one of which still had the old remains of a salt lick holder tacked onto it.
This would have been complicated enough, but adding to our woes was the fact that this complicated group of structures was located deep within a mature coniferous plantation... The total station is a complex piece of kit which gets located into the landscape using a GPS system, which takes readings of all required points by bouncing a laser off a prism held at the correct location. To get all the readings requires a clear line of sight, and when that's not possible, the surveyor is required to leapfrog around the site in a series of stations, all the time making sure that they take readings to and from each of the stations so the machine knows where to locate itself in the landscape. It's a great piece of kit when it's used correctly, but setting up each station takes time, and I think we ended up with nine or ten stations in all... Compare that to the previous farmstead, which required only five stations, the walls being reduced to their footings and the tree coverage being much less dense.
The end result will, I'm sure, be well worth it. Neither site has made it onto the National Monuments Record of Scotland yet ( that's the database of all known archaeological and architectural sites curated by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland), so I guess we've accomplished something rather useful here.
And now I'm knackered, so I'm signing off. Have a nice weekend, everyone!
We've completed three days of our archaeological survey, and progress has been, um, satisfactory. We've completed Total Station Surveys of both farmsteads, and two elevation drawings (including one of the more difficult elevations. I'd hoped to be slightly further ahead by now, but the second of the two surveys has been a nightmare (just as the Great Surveyor predicted...)
Picture the scene. A ruinous farmsteading on a 'C' shaped plan, with the farmhouse in the E separated from the adjacent range (?barns) by a low wall (defining the garden, perhaps. It's set within an enclosure, with an additional enclosure set to the E, within which two refugee deciduous trees (probably at least a hundred years old) still survive. All this required to be surveyed, including the trees, which were after all part of the 19th century steading, and one of which still had the old remains of a salt lick holder tacked onto it.
This would have been complicated enough, but adding to our woes was the fact that this complicated group of structures was located deep within a mature coniferous plantation... The total station is a complex piece of kit which gets located into the landscape using a GPS system, which takes readings of all required points by bouncing a laser off a prism held at the correct location. To get all the readings requires a clear line of sight, and when that's not possible, the surveyor is required to leapfrog around the site in a series of stations, all the time making sure that they take readings to and from each of the stations so the machine knows where to locate itself in the landscape. It's a great piece of kit when it's used correctly, but setting up each station takes time, and I think we ended up with nine or ten stations in all... Compare that to the previous farmstead, which required only five stations, the walls being reduced to their footings and the tree coverage being much less dense.
The end result will, I'm sure, be well worth it. Neither site has made it onto the National Monuments Record of Scotland yet ( that's the database of all known archaeological and architectural sites curated by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland), so I guess we've accomplished something rather useful here.
And now I'm knackered, so I'm signing off. Have a nice weekend, everyone!
