Stratford Halliday BSc FSA Scot, University of Edinburgh.
Regent Building Lecture Theatre, Regent Walk, Aberdeen.
The Society has a long tradition of archaeological fieldwork, creating drawings that chart the evolution of survey and investigation in the field over the last two hundred years.
Through this prism we can not only detect the transition of survey from antiquarian pursuit to archaeological tool, but also the evolution of knowledge and understanding, as the pattern of recording shifts from hard-edged stone monuments to the softer focus of earthworks and such minor features as palisades and timber round-houses.
And it is only by understanding aspects of this history that we can use the accumulated knowledge they contain, that we can extract information from a drawing of a site that may have been made over 100 years ago by David Christison and to this day remains the only available plan.
This past is thus directly relevant to archaeologists in the field today as they apply new digital technologies which at first sight appear to render so much of traditional practice redundant. These are some of the threads that we will explore and hope to untangle.
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