Practice question · Multiple choice
Excavation is called the only experiment that cannot be repeated. What follows for how a site must be recorded?
Hints
- Ask what a researcher in 2100 will want that nobody thinks to record now.
- The site is gone. What is left to study?
Show the 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.
Practise Excavation Methodology
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Excavation Methodology
- Order the single-context recording routine for one layer.
- Match each sampling strategy to its logic.
- Why do excavators deliberately leave part of a site undug?
- Order the stages of a well-run excavation project.
- Sort each technique: non-destructive survey or destructive excavation?
- Digging in arbitrary 20-centimeter spits is preferred over single-context excavation because it is more…