Site strategy

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Making sense of a complex urban site

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Medieval charnel house, found during the same Spitalfields excavation as the Roman cemetery and Tudor gold coins

What does the strategy involve?

The excavation strategy depends on what type of site is being excavated and what kind of questions the archaeologists hope to answer. It also has to take into account the type of development that is taking place. The strategy can include helping developers to avoid or conserve archaeological remains instead of excavating them.

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This amazing canister was found carefully buried in a ditch around a temple excavated in Southwark

How is a strategy put together?

Project managers use as much information they can get in advance from fieldwork and desk-based assessment to try and predict where the best evidence will be and therefore where trenches should be dug. They look at the survey and sampling techniques available to them and decide how they should be used. Because of the planning laws, knows as PPG16, archaeologists have to work on every development site which uncovers archaeology, so they may have to respond as best they can in the time allowed to them.

The golden rule of archaeological planning is to expect the unexpected. After all, you never know what you might find!

What did you actually find?
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