Researchers gather two very different sets of information during the course of any excavation. They can examine tangible findings, such as artifacts and the remains of plants, animals, and humans, well after an excavation has ended. However, excavation destroys contextual features, such as building remains, as they are uncovered.
To preserve vital information about these remains, archaeologists painstakingly catalog every nuance of a site through volumes of photographs and drawings. Lesson Plan 1. Lesson Plan 2. Lesson Plan 3. Language Arts. Idea Labs. Select Subject:. Select Grade:. Enter Keyword:. Download this lesson in Adobe Acrobat format.
Excavation is destruction in the sense that when we remove the soil and its contents, we do so once and for all. Excavation is now often called 'preservation by record' because the idea is to 'preserve' as much data as possible by the most careful and meticulous recording before, during and after excavation. Archaeology is the study of the ancient and recent human past through material remains. Archaeology analyzes the physical remains of the past in pursuit of a broad and comprehensive understanding of human culture.
Detailed excavation covers more precise excavating jobs, such as excavations for footings, for a concrete house slab, driveway preparation, retaining wall footings, and service trenches. Driveways often require detailed excavation such as thickened edges, strip drains, and precise gradients. Synonyms : barb, dig, jab, slam, shot, shaft, archeological site, digging, jibe, gibe, mining.
Excavation by Material Topsoil Excavation. As the name suggests, this type of excavation involves the removal of the exposed or the topmost area of the earth's surface. Basement Excavation. The first step in an archaeological excavation is surveying the area. This can be done either with remote sensing or direct visual observation.
Archaeologists conducting a survey. Archaeologists also use non-invasive techniques to survey sites known as remote sensing. This process may be contrasted with the purpose of Surveying which is to determine by measurement the positions of existing features.
There are several different kinds of archaeology : prehistoric, historic, classical, and underwater, to name a few. These often overlap. For example, when archaeologists studied the wreck of the Civil War ironclad, the Monitor, they were doing both historic and underwater archaeology. Check weather conditions before work, be mindful of rain and storms. Keep heavy equipment away from trench edges. Be mindful of the location of utilities underground. Always wear proper protective equipment. Don't work beneath raised loads.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Shoring is the process of temporarily supporting a building, vessel, structure, or trench with shores props when in danger of collapse or during repairs or alterations. Shoring comes from shore, a timber or metal prop. Shoring may be vertical, angled, or horizontal. Over excavation.
The term ' excavation ' refers to the process of removing earth to form a cavity in the ground, typically to allow a below-ground structure to be constructed. The term ' over excavation ' refers to an excavation that goes beyond the depth required for the formation of a below-ground structure. So everything we find on one horizontal layer can be thought of to have happened at the same time.
Finds and features uncovered in undisturbed contexts within the same horizontal space demonstrate that they all occurred at the same time. This is also why we try to choose areas to excavate that would be reasonably undisturbed. If the site to be excavated is one that only has a single-period of human activity, this is super important or else a lot could be compromised. The singularity of this site though also makes it much easier to ensure that nothing has been tampered with.
If the site has been occupied for thousands of years on the other hand, finding an undisturbed spot will be almost impossible. For this, we use Stratigraphy and the law of superposition. If you want to learn more about stratigraphy and all its fun laws, I made a fun video using Jell-O a while back, go watch it! But quickly, we just need to know that if one layer is found on top of another, the lower layer was deposited first and is therefore older than the one that lies on top of it.
This is just for formation and deposition though. Someone could have dug a pit way back when, or animals could have burrowed and caused some finds to fall to lower layers.
Be vigilant, friends. There are a few different ways to excavate a site, and the choice of method will largely be based on the type of site, the geography of the area, time constraints, and also what we want to learn from the site. Some techniques favour the vertical dimension of the site, going deeper to reveal stratification.
While others are more horizontal, which open up larger areas of a particular layer to reveal more spatial relationships between finds and features.
Usually, archaeologists use a mix of both in different ways and no one method is going to be universally applicable. The Wheeler Box-Grid. This method tries to be the happy medium with satisfying both the vertical and horizontal ideals. These baulks of earth mean that the vertical layers can be seen, traced, and correlated over the site.
Once you get the general layout and ideas for the layers, some baulks might be removed to join the squares in an open excavation to expose any features that are of interest or importance.
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