# Excavation Methodology

History I · Archaeology · https://tryals.app/learn/history-i/excavation-methodology

## The Science That Destroys Its Evidence

Excavation is the only experiment that can never be rerun: to read a site you must take it apart, and the layers, once lifted, are gone. Archaeology's answer to this brutal fact is **total recording**: the site is destroyed, but it is destroyed into an archive of drawings, photographs, coordinates, and context sheets to rebuild the sequence on paper forever.

Digging is the last resort. A project begins with **survey** before the first trowel touches dirt. **Provenience is the find's meaning**; an object without context is merely an art object.

| Survey Method | What It Does |
| --- | --- |
| **Desk-based assessment** | Maps, archives, aerial photos |
| **Field walking** | Surface collection of artifact scatters |
| **Test pits and sampling** | Targeted or random statistical probes |

## Taking It Apart in Order

Modern practice excavates in **single contexts**, peeling depositional events in reverse order, youngest first. Each context is recorded before removal, avoiding the pitfall of arbitrary fixed spits.

| Digging Method | How It Works | The Risk |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Arbitrary spits** | Fixed 20cm depth cuts | Chews through multiple floors and mixes contents |
| **Single contexts** | Follows natural layers in reverse | Slower, but preserves exact historical sequence |

> **The Pitfall of Completeness:** Even with perfect recording, excavation spends the site. Best practice leaves part of every site untouched as a gift to future technologies like DNA and isotope analysis.

## Practice questions

7 of this lesson's 12 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Order the single-context recording routine for one layer.

**Answer:**

1. Define and clean the context’s surface
2. Photograph and draw it to scale
3. Record levels and complete the context sheet
4. Excavate the context, bagging finds under its number
5. Reveal the next context below and repeat

**Why:** Record, then remove, never the reverse. Each cycle converts one depositional event into archive before destroying it; the loop repeats until natural subsoil.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/excavation-methodology/order-the-single-context-recording-routine-for-one-layer

### 2. Match each sampling strategy to its logic.

**Answer:**

- Random sampling → Every square an equal chance, bias excluded
- Stratified sampling → Each terrain zone guaranteed coverage
- Judgment sampling → Expertise targets the likeliest spots
- Total excavation → Everything dug, rare, costly, unrepeatable

**Why:** Since no one can dig everything, statistics chooses. Random protects against wishful digging; stratified protects against lucky terrain; judgment bets on experience, most projects blend all three.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/excavation-methodology/match-each-sampling-strategy-to-its-logic

### 3. Why do excavators deliberately leave part of a site undug?

A. Undug areas are legally worthless
B. Future methods will extract evidence we cannot yet read
C. Excavation is destruction, the reserve hedges our mistakes
D. Budgets and time rarely allow total excavation anyway

**Answer:** B. Future methods will extract evidence we cannot yet read; C. Excavation is destruction, the reserve hedges our mistakes; D. Budgets and time rarely allow total excavation anyway

**Why:** DNA, isotopes, and radiocarbon all arrived after the great sites were largely dug, the strongest argument for the reserve. The untouched half is a bequest, not a leftover.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/excavation-methodology/why-do-excavators-deliberately-leave-part-of-a-site-undug

### 4. Order the stages of a well-run excavation project.

**Answer:**

1. Desk-based assessment of maps, archives, and past finds
2. Field walking and geophysical survey
3. Sampling strategy and grid laid over the site
4. Excavation in single contexts, youngest first
5. Post-excavation analysis of finds and records
6. Publication, the archive becomes the site

**Why:** The trowel appears at step four of six. Most of archaeology happens before and after the digging, and the publication is what survives when the site itself is spent.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/excavation-methodology/order-the-stages-of-a-well-run-excavation-project

### 5. Sort each technique: **non-destructive survey** or **destructive excavation**?

**Answer:**

- Non-destructive survey: Field walking a plowed field for surface sherds, Magnetometer sweep of the paddock, Aerial photography at low evening sun, Total station mapping of surface earthworks
- Destructive excavation: Opening a trench across the enclosure ditch, Test pit through the midden

**Why:** Everything that reads the site without opening it can be repeated; everything that opens it spends it. The modern rule: exhaust the repeatable methods first.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/excavation-methodology/sort-each-technique-non-destructive-survey-or-destructive-excavation

### 6. Digging in arbitrary 20-centimeter spits is preferred over single-context excavation because it is more objective.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** Spits are faster but stratigraphically blind, one spit can slice through three floors and permanently mix their finds. Single-context excavation follows the deposits time actually made.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/excavation-methodology/digging-in-arbitrary-20-centimeter-spits-is-preferred-over

### 7. Excavation is called the only experiment that cannot be repeated. What follows for how a site must be recorded?

A. Excavation should be avoided in favour of remote sensing wherever possible
B. Only a sample should be excavated, leaving the rest for later techniques
C. Findings must be published quickly before the record degrades
D. Everything must be recorded as it is removed

**Answer:** D. Everything must be recorded as it is removed

**Why:** The archive replaces the site permanently, so anything unrecorded is destroyed rather than merely unstudied, which is why soil samples are kept for analyses not yet invented. Options 2 and 4 are also genuine practice and are responses to the same fact, which the recording principle addresses directly.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-i/excavation-methodology/excavation-is-called-the-only-experiment-that-cannot-be-repeated