Dots on Maps: On Context (re: the PAS)

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Of course ten-figure grid references are not just a feature of recording where metal detectorists stoop (see the post below) they are useful for recording townscapes as well. Dennis Blockhead of the Northeast England Townscapes Project (hashtag #NEETownscapes) tweets about his excitement on finding a:

"fantastic piece of townscape, and the accurate 10 fig grid ref makes it all the more important in terms of spatial context".

Over to the left is a picture of the townscape that so excited him, and below is the spatial context of the position of that piece of townscape in space.

This is not recording 'townscapes' in any way, its an isolated lamp post. The dot on a map showing this one cast iron and glass object is a dot on a map.

I think on this day (which is also a context), most people will recognise the words above (if you don't Google 'Wilfred Owen') and their mind fills in the known context and we all understand what the poet was talking about. But without that context - the other words of the poem (plus the extra-source knowledge we all have of the conditions on the battlefields Owen and his fellows suffered and died on), that passage is just words, some of which we can get the gist of because its a Latin tag derived from Horace's Odes - but again that is extra-source knowledge (in the terminology of Topolski). Context is not where one thing is, a light-giving post at 'X marks the spot' or 'some words at the end of some rows of other ones'.

A single dot on a map is NOT archaeological context, no matter how accurately it is plotted.