'Exceptions or Rules and Prevailing Trends in Archaeology?

One of Cultural Property Observer's star commentators and Garrett detectors poster-boy UK metal detectorist John Howland can be found opining (March 11, 2014 at 3:49 am)

Before commencing an excavation, arkies usually employ a mechanical digger to remove the first three to five feet of topsoil — the same topsoil — in which metal detectors find casual losses.[...] ‘Context’ is a useful Red Herring when applied to detecting.  [...] What the arkies should be doing to preserve ‘context’ is to brush their way down the three to five feet. Failure to do this, is by their argument against detectorists, wanton, professional vandalism.

There's another PAS FLO who's not done a very good job explaining what's what to the tekkies. And so the misinformation spreads and spreads as the archaeologists sit with arms crossed and shoulders shrugged.

I'm going to guess that I have visited, participated in, directed and inspected far more excavations than Mr Howland. In my experience (and I am pretty sure most colleagues asked would back me up on this), it is not "usual" to employ a mechanical excavator to remove such a depth of soil from an archaeological site. In some cases a particular research programme might dictate it, the removal of 1939-45 bomb rubble from cellars in excavations in Polish cities is one example I have seen, the removal of material of the better documented past 300 years (so the same 300 years ignored by the Treasure Act and PAS recording) in developer-funded work aimed at a particular problem (work in Roman Colchester in the 1970s and 1980s for example), or sampling the buried soil below a lynchet (such as they have near Mr Howland's home) or linear earthwork. None of these however are "usual".  

To suggest that context is not a "red herring" is to show utter ignorance of basic archaeological methodology. Mr Howland seems to think that an archaeological excavation is the same as systematic surface survey (see here for some brief notes on that in Simple English). Duh.

An even flimsier grasp on reality is shown by those who think a paintbrush can be used as a hole-digging tool (a notion seen here too). 


Vignette: Metal detectorist confused by hole in ground.