Competence for an archaeological field evaluation team

Field evaluation team competence is tested through the written scheme of investigation, and the person who tests it is the local authority's archaeological adviser rather than the planning officer. That document has to name who will direct the work, who will supervise each trench, which specialists will deal with the material recovered, and what experience each of them has. A written scheme submitted with roles left as job titles and no names tends to come back for revision, which costs a fortnight at the worst point in the programme.

Trial trenching is also the only stage of archaeological work where the evidence is destroyed as it is gathered. There is no second attempt at an excavated trench.

Roles on an evaluation team and who does what

A typical evaluation of a dozen trenches runs with a layered team.

A project manager holds the contract, the written scheme and the budget, and signs the report. A site director or project officer runs the fieldwork day to day, makes the interpretive decisions and is responsible for the recording standard. Supervisors run individual trenches or groups of trenches and check the recording as it is produced. Field archaeologists excavate and record. A surveyor ties the trenches and features to the national grid, usually with survey-grade satellite positioning or a total station. A plant operator strips and backfills.

Behind the fieldwork sit the specialists, who may never visit the site: finds specialists by material type, environmental processing and analysis staff, and whoever handles conservation of fragile objects.

The division matters because an evaluation report is only as good as its weakest link. A beautifully excavated trench recorded by someone who cannot phase a sequence produces an ambiguous result, and ambiguity on an evaluation usually means more trenches.

Site director and supervisor experience

The relevant professional body is the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists, which accredits individuals at practitioner, associate and member grades and also operates a registered organisation scheme for employers. Curators commonly expect the site director to hold an accredited grade and the organisation to be registered.

What experience actually counts is narrower than the grade. A site director should have run evaluations of comparable scale, in comparable deposits, in the same region. Alluvial sequences, deep urban stratigraphy, machine-stripped rural landscapes and waterlogged deposits each need different judgement, and someone whose experience is entirely in one is slower and less certain in another.

Supervisors need enough autonomy to make recording decisions without waiting for the director, and enough discipline to keep the record consistent across trenches. On a large evaluation, inconsistency between supervisors is the usual defect in the archive, which is why the question of who checks whose work, and who signs the output, deserves the same treatment as in any other discipline. We look at that in supervision chains and graduate work signed by a chartered author.

Machine operator and plant competence

The machine operator is a competence requirement that written schemes often skip, and it has a direct effect on the archaeology.

Trench stripping is done with a tracked excavator fitted with a toothless ditching bucket, working under archaeological direction, removing overburden in controlled passes and stopping on the first archaeological horizon. An operator who has not done it before will cut 200 mm too deep on the first pass and remove the feature you were looking for.

The specification to write into the scheme is a competent and certificated operator with demonstrable experience of archaeological stripping, a toothless bucket of appropriate width, working under the direct supervision of the site director, with spoil mounded clear of the trench edge and the topsoil and subsoil kept separate for reinstatement.

Underground services need a utility search, drawings and detection before any machine arrives, and the responsibility for that sits with the client as much as with the contractor.

Finds and environmental specialists

Name the specialists in the written scheme, or at least name the organisations and the grade of specialist to be used. A curator asked to approve a scheme promising unspecified specialist input has no way of knowing whether a 2,000-sherd assemblage will be assessed properly.

Human remains deserve separate planning. Removal requires a licence under the Burial Act 1857 from the Ministry of Justice, with conditions on screening, treatment and reinterment, and the application takes time. Where the desk-based assessment flagged a possible cemetery, apply before fieldwork starts rather than when the first skull appears.

Health and safety on an open excavation

An evaluation trench is a construction site excavation and the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 apply.

The matters that need addressing in the risk assessment are trench stability and the depth at which support or battering becomes necessary, exclusion of plant from the area around an open trench, edge protection and fencing where the site is accessible to the public, buried services, contaminated ground on brownfield sites, confined space risk in deep or waterlogged trenches, lone working, and welfare.

Contaminated ground is the one that most often surprises project teams. Where the site history includes industrial use, the archaeological team needs the ground investigation data before they dig, and that interacts with the scope of the contamination work on the same site.

Backfilling and reinstatement are part of the method, not an afterthought. Agree in advance whether trenches are backfilled to the original profile, whether topsoil is replaced as topsoil, and who reinstates the surface.

Approval of the team by the curator

The approval route is usually a condition on the planning permission requiring a written scheme of investigation to be submitted to and approved by the local planning authority, with the authority taking advice from its archaeological adviser or the county historic environment service.

What the adviser reads for is a scheme that matches the risk identified in the Archaeological Desk-Based Assessment: the right number and position of trenches, a sampling strategy proportionate to the deposit model, named staff with relevant experience, named specialists, a sampling and recording methodology referenced to the professional standard, and a programme that allows for the possibility of finding something.

Submit the scheme early. A condition requiring approval before any development starts, met by a scheme submitted the week work was due to begin, produces exactly the delay everyone wanted to avoid. Where the archaeological consultant changes between application and discharge of conditions, keep the evidence base intact, as discussed in changing consultant mid-application without losing evidence.

Reporting and the post-excavation stage

The output of an Archaeological Field Evaluation is a report with the trench record, feature descriptions, specialist assessments of the material recovered, a phased interpretation, and a statement of the significance of what was found and what it implies for the development.

Post-excavation work is a separate stage with its own cost and its own competence requirements. Assessment of the finds and samples, selection for full analysis, radiocarbon dating where it is justified, illustration, and preparation of the archive for deposition all follow the fieldwork, and a project that budgeted only for digging will stall here.

Two things to settle at the start. Where the archive will be deposited, because museum capacity is constrained and some will not accept new material without a prior agreement and a fee. And who records the project on the national index of archaeological investigations, which is normally a requirement of the written scheme.

If you need a reviewer with archaeological competence to look over a draft before it goes to the curator, the professional directory is the route to someone qualified in the right discipline.

PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required.