Our Survey Said…

This is Laura, surveying our suspected mediaeval watermill earthwork at Grange Farm in Stalmine. Please note the look of concentration on what can be seen of her face.

That’s because Laura takes contour surveying very seriously. Actually, so does Chris. And so do Michelle and me come to that matter. In fact, we reckon that contour surveying’s so important in the grand scheme of archaeology that we ought to make it a pre-requisite for any new Wyre Archaeology members to complete a three-day course in the subject before being allowed to stick a spade in the ground. It’s a great way for newcomers to become more intimate with a site. Understand the terrain and you’ll have more chance of understanding what lies beneath it. This, in turn, helps people new to the archaeologing world come to grips with why there are so many rules and regulations surrounding it. Rules and regulations, we ought to add, that tend to be overlooked by the BBC’s latest license-payer endorsed farce ‘Bone Kickers’ and/or Indiana Jones et al.
Contour Surveying is also a bit on the tedious side, so newcomers should get stuck into it straight away and me and Chris can take a few evenings off for once.
Here’s J.D. holding the stadia staff.

Please note the look of concentration on what can be seen of his face, the unlit cigarette hanging despondently from his lips and the blue marker halfway up the pole that’s actually the stadia staff specific spirit level. (Judging by J.D.’s expression here, to be honest, his spirits were already flagging considerably at this point.)
We’ve covered the techniques of contour surveying elsewhere, so you might be asking yourselves, ‘Why are they rehashing all this stuff?’
Well, the first reason is that we’ve got a few photographs hanging around that we can’t find anything else to do with, such as this one.

Actually, that’s Fiona standing by the prehistoric ditch surrounding the Newer’s Wood burial ground in Pilling. It’s got bugger all to do with surveying really, but like I said, we’ve got a few of these photographs on the hard drive with nowhere else to go, so bear with us a while longer.
The second reason is that, after three continuous days of hard work (at least they would have been continuous days had they not been split over several weeks) Chris, Dave Hammond, Dave Hampson, Jean, Fiona, Barbara, Laura, J.D. and myself have finally completed the contour survey of the Grange Farm Platform. The only trouble is, just sticking the finished diagram up on this board by itself would have made for an extremely short posting, and we know how much time and effort our reader has come to expect from us as far as long-winded articles are concerned.
So, bearing all that in mind, here it is, shrunk down considerably to save web space, looking extremely green and probably not meaning a damned thing to anyone who’s not been following our progress. (Actually it probably won’t mean much to anybody who has been keeping up with our Grange Farm excavations either, but here it is regardless.)

A4 hi-res colour reproductions of this monumental work are available by sending a cheque or postal order for £40 to ‘The Wyre Archaeology Great Contour Map Rip Off Scheme’ c/o the third cubicle along, the men’s toilets behind the café with the chicken nesting in the urinal, Wyrefield Farm, Fleetwood.