A quick one this. I was siting int he office today at about midday and I received a call from Tim. It went along these lines:
Him: Fuhrer, there's a problem with the cameras...
Me: Yeees, what is it?
Him: We've reached the end of the films and changed them, but the colour one seems not to rewind.(despite me telling him I would come and change all the camera film in order to reduce the possibility of fucking the films up)
Me: OK, do you need to take photos? I'll come out and sort it out.
Him: It's OK, I took two shots with the black and white film and some with the digital.
An interlude: four and a half weeks ago I told all the other supervisors to take at least two shots of every archaeological feature with both the colour slide and black and white film cameras. Also back up shots would be taken with the digital camera. This is standard practise through the archaeological world.
Me: OK, but you need to take some with the colour slide as well. I've told you that before.
Him: But why? I got some with the black and white.
Me: But you need to take some with all the cameras or you will fuck the registers up.
Interlude: This has happened before. People take different amount of photos with the different cameras and the photo registers don't match up. I don't understand how such a simple operation can get cocked up, especially after I told the others and even wrote this information on the photo register, but there you go.
Him: But for what reason? You've already got the pictures.
Me: We haven't got colour slide pictures and because this is how it is done in archaeology.
Him: That's not a reason. You're just telling me what's happened before!
Me: OK the reasons are, what if one photo is blurred or out of focus? What if the light changes? You need black and white and colour pictures to be able to detect soil differences. That's why we take two pictures with each camera. That's why you have to take two picture with each camera.
Him: But they're not proper reasons, you should start asking why you are doing these things instead of blindly following traditional thinking!
Me: I've just fucking explained to you why things are done as they are. Are you saying we should throw away the 40year old rule book, just becasue you don't agree with it? Is today going to become the start of a new archaeological era, because you don't agree with how things have been done for the better part of half a century? Is this how Tim Cockrell advances archaeology? By rubbishing established fact and creating a new archaeological epoch where recording becomes the 'land of do as you please'?
I was waiting for him to get back to the office with a sharpened ranging pole in my hand...
