Practice question · Put in order
Replay this section’s formation. Order the events from first to last.
- Natural subsoil forms the base
- Occupation debris builds up on the floor
- The building collapses over the debris
- A pit is cut down through collapse, debris, and floor
- The pit silts up with fill
- A clay floor is laid on the subsoil
Hints
- Layers accumulate from the bottom upward.
- Anything that cuts through layers must postdate all of them.
Show the answer
- Natural subsoil forms the base
- A clay floor is laid on the subsoil
- Occupation debris builds up on the floor
- The building collapses over the debris
- A pit is cut down through collapse, debris, and floor
- The pit silts up with fill
Why
Superposition orders the layers; the cutting rule slots the pit in after everything it truncates; the filling rule puts the fill last. Three principles, one readable biography of a patch of ground.
Practise Stratigraphy and Relative Dating
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 Stratigraphy and Relative Dating
- Match each stratigraphic term to its definition.
- Each observation gives a terminus post quem or a terminus ante quem for the wall. Sort them.
- The law of superposition says lower layers are older. Give a situation where a strict reading of it produces…
- An object lying deeper than another can still be the younger of the two.
- A pit cut through three layers contains a coin of 200 CE. Why does the coin date the pit rather than the…
- Which processes can put OLDER objects into YOUNGER deposits?