aims and methods of excavation

jenreily89

Hi guys !!


doing a 2000 words essay on the aims of excavation and the methods used?

I need all the help I can get !!!

Deeeply appreciated

Picked as a subject for arts in UL and finding it difficult currently reading an interesting book Philip barker on the techniques.


thanks again

DeepSleeper

In most archaeological discussions, there are just two reasons for excavation - research and rescue. However, in recent years there has been much discussion about how 'rescue' excavations should have a strong research agenda too ...

So, today we tend to talk about Research Excavations and Development-led Excavations, the latter term being an improvement on rescue since it doesn't have automatic associations with rushed, poorly planned, poorly resourced rescue excavations of yesteryear. Having said there are just two reasons for excavation (research and rescue) is a bit of a sweeping statement too - one could mention excavation-in-advance-of-conservation, community archaeology projects etc as other reasons, though they aren't so common.

The aims of an excavation should not be confused with the reason for the excavation - various things can cause you to dig a hole, but in any case your aims need to be spelled out clearly in advance. Essentially, the big aim is knowledge - we want to know more about X. A research design is now considered to be an important step in the pre-excavation phase and this should outline the aims of the excavation as clearly as possible. The aims should not be confused with the excavation process - you might like to find some nice medieval pottery on your proposed excavation, but this is not an acceptable aim: the discovery of artefacts is an important part of the process and may contribute to the aims (i.e. may assist in understanding), but 'I'd like to find nice stuff' isn't a valid aim...

See if you can find some research designs for excavations - not results now, but the aims as outlined at the start. These will show you the aims for these particular projects and allow you to use them as case studies in your essay - I can't think of any offhand, but find a publication (book, journal article or online) that presents the results of a research excavation conducted in Britain or Ireland in the last 20 years and you should find the aims outlined at the start. Try Hayden's Trim Castle, O'Brien's Ross Island or Cotter's Western Stone Forts for a start - I don't know if they contain aims, but they should ...

With reference to methods, I would suggest you simply describe Brit/Irish open-area excavation and America box grid style excavation - a simple compare and contrast between these two styles will take at least 500 words to write up and if you go further and describe the Harris Matrix/single context system in a bit more detail then you have half the essay written already.

Tordelback

Barker can be heavy going if you really haven't a clue where to start (also: use more than one book, always). Try Kevin Greene's Archaeology: An Introduction (and the online material here), or the relevant bits in Renfrew and Bahn's Archaeology: Theory, Methods and Practice for examples of methods.

DeepSleeper makes some very good points, but I suspect you need might a more fundamental answer than the distinction between research and rescue: archaeological excavation aims to recover and preserve (either physically or by making a record) the material remains of the human past to facilitate its interpretation and understanding. Method-wise it does this by carefully exposing and establishing the spatial relationships between elements of remains (tools, buildings, rubbish, waste pits, bones etc.), and using these relationships to infer a sequence of events (through stratigraphy). Subsequent analysis of retained artefacts and samples (soil, bone, charcoal etc.) works with the recorded relationships to extract as much data as possible about the people and processes that created these remains.

DeepSleeper

Tordelback wrote: »

Barker can be heavy going if you really haven't a clue where to start (also: use more than one book, always). Try Kevin Greene's Archaeology: An Introduction (and the online material here), or the relevant bits in Renfrew and Bahn's Archaeology: Theory, Methods and Practice for examples of methods.

DeepSleeper makes some very good points, but I suspect you need might a more fundamental answer than the distinction between research and rescue: archaeological excavation aims to recover and preserve (either physically or by making a record) the material remains of the human past to facilitate its interpretation and understanding. Method-wise it does this by carefully exposing and establishing the spatial relationships between elements of remains (tools, buildings, rubbish, waste pits, bones etc.), and using these relationships to infer a sequence of events (through stratigraphy). Subsequent analysis of retained artefacts and samples (soil, bone, charcoal etc.) works with the recorded relationships to extract as much data as possible about the people and processes that created these remains.

Very good summation - but I was trying not to write the essay for them

Tordelback

DeepSleeper wrote: »

Very good summation - but I was trying not to write the essay for them

Heh, I take your point.

jenreily89

thank you both for your extremely helpful advice and information. I'm basically planning on giving a brief explanation of excavation in the introduction and then explaining the methods and just wondering would you have any help for me on how excavation is useful in modern archaeology?

I honestly do appreciate the help, it's proving to be very useful

DeepSleeper

jenreily89 wrote: »

thank you both for your extremely helpful advice and information. I'm basically planning on giving a brief explanation of excavation in the introduction and then explaining the methods and just wondering would you have any help for me on how excavation is useful in modern archaeology?

I honestly do appreciate the help, it's proving to be very useful

Excavation is one of the best ways to gather information on a particular site - there are other (usually cheaper) methods too (documentary research, topographic survey, geophysical survey, aerial photography, architectural analysis etc.), but one often finds that:

(i) theories coming from survey (topo or geophys) need to be ground-truthed - that is, they need to be tested by excavation before they can be accepted. That grassy bank might look medieval or than dark shadow on the geophys might look like a prehistoric ditch, but it can be very difficult to be sure without excavation

(ii) excavation can produce a much broader range of info that the various other investigative methods listed - stratigraphic evidence, artefacts, dating evidence, environmental evidence etc. - these all combine to tell a much fuller story of the site than would be possible with non-invasive methods

(iii) excavation is also useful to archaeology (and society more generally) in the sense that it is one of the foremost methods by which sites may be 'preserved by record' - if a site is faced with destruction (by coastal erosion, motorway, gradual collapse etc.), then the process of excavation yields a whole load of info for posterity.

The downside, of course, is that excavation is a destructive process - when it is finished, you are left with a large hole in the ground! That's why archaeologists are so focused on method and systematic recording - unlike the mainstream sciences (physics, biochemistry etc. which rely on repeatable experiments), excavation is a non-repeatable experiment - you just get one shot at it...

Hope you are enjoying your course OP - you mentioned that you are studying arts at UL - do the history department teach a course in archaeology or have they hired in an archaeologist to teach a new course? Just wondering - hadn't heard UL were teaching archaeology.

slowburner

jenreily89 wrote: »

...would you have any help for me on how excavation is useful in modern archaeology?

Modern archaeology, in this country, is generally considered to be post 1700.
The same principles and practices outlined in the posts above apply to excavations of sites from 1990 BC and 1990 AD. The only significant difference is that written/documentary evidence is available in a survey of a modern site.
Contemporary archaeology is a somewhat different beast and a contentious one at that, see here. The seminal difference between contemporary archaeology and modern archaeology is that in addition to artefactual and documentary evidence, the archaeologist can interview the creator of the evidence!
This brings us back to question the traditional definition of archaeology - broadly, 'the study of past people and culture through analysis of surviving physical remains'.
If we can interview the creator of the evidence, what is the point in 'excavating' it?

DeepSleeper

slowburner wrote: »

Modern archaeology, in this country, is generally considered to be post 1700.
The same principles and practices outlined in the posts above apply to excavations of sites from 1990 BC and 1990 AD. The only significant difference is that written/documentary evidence is available in a survey of a modern site.
Contemporary archaeology is a somewhat different beast and a contentious one at that, see here. The seminal difference between contemporary archaeology and modern archaeology is that in addition to artefactual and documentary evidence, the archaeologist can interview the creator of the evidence!
This brings us back to question the traditional definition of archaeology - broadly, 'the study of past people and culture through analysis of surviving physical remains'.
If we can interview the creator of the evidence, what is the point in 'excavating' it?

I think the OP may have been asking about the usefulness of excavation to the profession of archaeology in the modern era, as opposed to the usefulness of excavation to the study of the archaeology of the modern period ... but I may have got that backwards ...

Tordelback

I read it that way too, but the question slowburner answered so eloquently was much more interesting!

If I might add something to DeepSleeper's pretty comprehensive response, it'd be to paraphrase Ian Hodder: excavated evidence provides resistance to interpretation. That is, the material you excavate can overthrow the best theories produced by LiDAR, geo-phys, analysis of previous work or whatever. It's a direct contact with complex difficult material that is somehow more messy and less compliant with our neat ideas than evidence produced by the more indirect methods can be.

There's another aspect to this too, one teased out at length by Chris Tilley, that excavation represents a particular experience for the excavators, tactile, social, physical and intimate. The process has value as an experience in itself, as I think anyone who has done it can attest, beyond noble notions of a scientific quest for knowledge of the past. There's a lot to be said for getting your hands dirty.

jenreily89

anyone willing to give a quick run thru of the methods , just a quick outline of the process?

RDM_83 again

Take a read of the Museum of London Excavation manual MOLAS as in commercial archaeology at least in my experience its the basic guide/source of methodology used by the people actually physically excavating. Its a pretty short read and is available as a PDF online.