Museum of the Albemarle: Excavation a meticulous process that recovers our past

With the recent news about the discoveries under the churchyard of Christ Episcopal Church, now seems like as good a time as any to examine what an archaeological excavation is and how it can help us to better understand how the people of the past lived their lives.

Excavation is probably the most recognizable archaeological method. It involves carefully digging holes — called excavation units — to search for, record and recover cultural materials.

An excavation is not just haphazard digging in search of treasure. Throughout an excavation, very detailed notes must be maintained by the archaeologists. Excavation units are dug in squares that are kept very neat with straight walls and precise corners. Having a well-maintained unit helps the archaeologist to more easily identify changes in stratigraphy (the layers of soil), features, and artifacts.

Tracking the stratigraphy of an excavation site can provide important context to the contents of a unit. The law of superposition, which states that things found in deeper soil layers are older than things found closer to the surface, allows archaeologists to use stratigraphy to better understand how artifacts and other materials that they find may be related. Soil also can provide insight into the things that happened at a location. For example, a location where a fire occurred may include a distinct ash layer in the stratigraphy.

Features are nonportable evidence of human activity. These can include postholes, hearths, middens (places where past people dumped waste), or many other such things. Often these are found by “reading the dirt.” Disturbances to the soil, even those that happened long ago, can lead to slight differences in the appearance of the soil that archaeologists can find and record.

Artifacts, as opposed to features, are portable evidence of human activity. These come in a wide range of shapes and sizes. As soil is removed from the excavation unit, it is sifted to recover small artifacts that may have been missed. To the best of their ability, archaeologists try to record the artifacts they have found in situ, meaning in their original location. Recording in situ through pictures, maps, and sketches allows them to have as much context as possible when interpreting an artifact.

Context, in an archaeological sense, can include things like stratigraphy as well as proximity to other artifacts or features. Things that are found close together may have been associated with each other in the past which can change our present interpretation compared to if each artifact were to be examined individually without any surrounding details.

Each of these things is carefully tracked by archaeologists so that they can learn as much as possible. Excavation is an inherently destructive process. Once a site has been excavated it cannot be unexcavated so it is important to be meticulous and detailed.