Prepared and maintained by Cambridge Development Archaeology for development teams working across Cambridge and Cambridgeshire.
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The next decision
Separate assessment, analysis, reporting and archive budgets. The assessment defines what further work is justified; archive acceptance and formal discharge depend on the repository requirements and the actual condition.
Close the obligations after site handover
Assessment: identify the appointed report lead, specialist assessments and recommendations, with a costed next-stage proposal. Analysis: agree the authorised research scope, specialist commissions and report/publication outputs. Archive: confirm the receiving repository, accession arrangements, material/document standards and any deposition charges.
Before accepting an archaeological package as complete, reconcile the outstanding samples, finds, digital records, reports and approvals. Record who funds and delivers each remaining item, especially where the fieldwork contractor is no longer active on site.
A land sale, contractor demobilisation or practical-completion certificate does not automatically extinguish the planning obligation. Ask the planning authority what evidence is needed for the specific condition; do not assume every condition requires identical archive or publication stages.
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What post-excavation actually involves
Processing, selection, analysis and reporting follow the approved scope and repository requirements; not every recovered item needs identical specialist analysis. The scale of that work is set by what came out of the ground, which is why it cannot be fixed at tender with any precision on a site of unknown potential.
- Finds processing, quantification, conservation where required, and specialist reporting by material type
- Environmental sample processing, and analysis of charred plant remains, molluscs, pollen or waterlogged material
- Radiocarbon and other scientific dating where the sequence requires it
- Human remains analysis, where burials were excavated, under the terms of the licence
- Stratigraphic analysis, phasing, illustration and the final report
- Publication, where the results warrant it and the authority expects it
- Archive preparation to the receiving museum's standard, and deposition with the transfer of title
What sets the post-excavation timescale
Specialists work to their own queues, and dating results have their own turnaround. A modest site can be reported within a few months of fieldwork ending. A large, productive excavation with substantial assemblages and a full dating programme runs considerably longer.
This matters commercially because the condition remains undischarged until the reporting obligation in the approved scheme is met. If discharge is tied to a milestone in your programme — an occupation, a sale, a funding drawdown — the post-excavation period has to be in the programme, visible, from the start.
Where the cost concentrates
Post-excavation cost scales with the quantity and complexity of material, not with site area. A large stripped site with sparse dispersed features produces limited analysis. A small site with a deep, waterlogged, artefact-rich sequence can produce a great deal.
That relationship is the reason early evaluation has commercial value beyond the fieldwork stage: it indicates the assemblage you are likely to generate, and therefore the size of the obligation sitting behind the excavation.
How to handle it in a tender
Treat a lump-sum post-excavation figure offered before fieldwork with caution. Unless the site is already well understood, no one can know the assemblage. A defensible tender sets out an assessment stage first, with the full analysis programme costed once the material is quantified — and states plainly which specialist rates and archive fees apply.
Ask specifically whether museum deposition fees, storage charges and any publication contribution are included. They are a common exclusion, and they fall due at the point everyone assumed the job was finished.
Archive deposition
The archive must be prepared to the receiving repository's requirements and accepted by it, with title transferred from the landowner. Repository capacity and standards vary, and requirements should be confirmed at the scheme-writing stage rather than discovered at the end.
If you hold an excavation that was never reported or deposited — a common situation on schemes where a contractor changed — send us what exists. Unfinished archaeological obligations tend to surface at the worst possible moment in a disposal.