RIP Mick Aston :(

[Raven]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23041568

Damn informative bloke! Met him once too, nice guy.

 

[rynnor]

Shame - rather young to go but a life spent doing what he loved is something to celebrate

A friend of mine studied Archaeology part time at Bristol Uni and he was one of her lecturers which is pretty cool.

 

[TdC]

RIP :-(

 

[Tom]

I loved watching Time Team, it was a great programme - entertaining and informative. They made a programme a few miles away from my house, it has the distinction of being of their few digs in which they found fuck all. Literally, nothing.

 

[rynnor]

They made a programme a few miles away from my house, it has the distinction of being of their few digs in which they found fuck all. Literally, nothing.

Well you are up North

 

[Kryten]

Real shame. Love that program and still find myself watching entire runs of them if I pass them on Dave/UKTV etc.Yeah it's dumbed down massively but it's still rather entertaining and a great way of getting archaeology on TV. I also didn't know Mick was mostly responsible for the idea in the first place.

 

[throdgrain]

Shame

 

[Hawkwind]

RIP

Love his reason for leaving Time Team, dumbin down the science. Scandalous!

 

[rynnor]

Real shame. Love that program and still find myself watching entire runs of them if I pass them on Dave/UKTV etc.Yeah it's dumbed down massively but it's still rather entertaining and a great way of getting archaeology on TV. I also didn't know Mick was mostly responsible for the idea in the first place.

I don't think it could have happened without him - no one would have licensed them or co-operated without an academic behind it and it was extremely contravertsial within Archaeology for years - he got a lot of crap from other archaeologists over it but it did eventually die down.

I am somewhat divided on it myself - it was good TV but it no doubt encouraged the thousands of metal detectorists who ravage our country of archaeological finds.

 

[Tom]

They do a hell of a lot less damage than a mechanical plough and some are responsible for the most important finds we've ever made:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_torcs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Hoard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staffordshire_Hoard

 

[rynnor]

They do a hell of a lot less damage than a mechanical plough and some are responsible for the most important finds we've ever made:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_torcs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Hoard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staffordshire_Hoard

The big finds do not make up for all the sites that are degraded by removal of metallic objects leaving us with a distorted inpression of sites on subsequent analysis.

I have personally threatened to call the police on several that I have found digging away at my local scheduled ancient monuments (which is a criminal offence).

In general they are a bloody nuisance who dont properly record their finds rendering them largely useless to archaeology.

You also have to secure dig sites or they turn up at night to nick stuff.

I would ban the bloody things tomorrow.