![[ Planning a feature ]](../images/planning.jpg)
Archaeologists differ over whether to keep a daybook.
Some think it should be rendered irrelevant by modern recording techniques,
a proforma-filler's heaven. It is indeed easy to see a daybook as a throwback
to the old days when pipe-smoking dons in baggy suits wrote up a daybook
and made sketches on the back of cigarette packets. This often led to less
than satisfactory records.
They do, however, render some sort of structure to one's memories and even serve to plug the odd gap in one's record-keeping - not that any archaeologist ever has to cope with such an occurrence! Daybooks also - frequently in an amusing way when fuelled by hindsight - show up some stupid notions and bad decisions.
Most importantly (and this is hidden by any subsequent publications on the site) daybooks serve to underline how the archaeologist is usually mining backwards into time and digging 'blind'. However much hightech remote sensing apparatus is accessible, it seldom provides anything more than the crudest hint at what comes next, and for many urban sites it is of no use at all. So, from the very first moment that you start moving topsoil, you are forever wondering how things are going to develop.
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This page last updated May 1st 1997
