Errors for Unit J7

Caitlin Chaves Yates – March 2011

Introduction
Form
Record
Judgment

Introduction

A complete explanation for the UGR approach to errors can be found in the MZ sitewide book. Here the problems and errors specific to J7 are highlighted and explained.

Form

There are very few errors in the form of J7 due its limited scope. The majority of the mistakes can be found in the object descriptions where technical terms are sometimes misused, and where spelling mistakes by non-native speakers are common. In general, these mistakes do not impede the ability to use the record.

Record

J7 was a relatively small excavation with a simple stratigraphy so there are few errors in the record. As is usually the case, most errors are in under-recording of information - some data, particularly elevations for features, had to be recovered from the corresponding q-lot records. It was, however, possible to recreate almost all the missing data.

Judgment

If it were possible to “redo” the J7 excavations, I think it would have been beneficial to excavate the baulks by feature instead of in large volumetric units. Although no real information was lost (the baulks usually were fairly uniform), it is not possible now to assign them easily to strata or separate by phase.

During the excavations the excavators and I did not recognize numerous disarticulated human bones. The bones were instead collected as animal bones, using the normal bone-lot system. They were bagged according to the q-lot that they were associated with. This led to less accurate spatial information about the location of these particular bones. As lR notes, some bones were not triangulated and given relays. The spatial information, however, was still recorded on the level of the q-lot. Since so many bones were likely included in the large brickfall it may not have been possible to triangulate each find even had we identified them. In the future, we will be more careful when excavating the brickfall of J2, J6 and J7 to make sure we are doing our best to identify human bones when possible.