Archaeological Field Work – A Brief Introduction

Ask anyone who hasn't actually done the job what they think of when you say "Archaeologist", and they'll get this bright eyed look, as they imagine Indiana Jones running away from a giant rolling ball with a golden idol in his hands, his battered fedora on his head and a whip in his hand. We can thank Steven Spielberg for bringing more people into Archaeology, but the real world of archaeology is a lot less exciting – if no less interesting – than what's shown in the movies.

Real archaeologists find digging sites by examining maps. They look at water table maps, trade route maps, even maps of sedimentation and wind patterns, looking for places that might have held a settlement in times past. If they're dealing with an area that has strong written and oral traditions, sometimes the actual literature can give guidance on where to look for hidden gems; this is a technique used all through Israel and Jordan for Biblical archaeology, but the same technique has also been used for finding Norse settlements on Greenland, Iceland and the Labrador coast, and for finding Slavic settlements in the Baltic and Russia.

Once a likely area has been found, an archaeologist will organize a survey team; the survey team's job is to walk over the site, and, as several people say, "Keep their eyes open, and look for interesting things to trip over." The cues for archaeology digs are often times fragments of pottery, bits of metal, bones of domestic animals like chicken, sheep, pigs and horses, and telltale rises that might be all that's left of a sod-walled hut after 500 or 5,000 years. Another way to find interesting places to survey is to look after severe flooding or rainstorms, especially on freshly plowed or excavated lands.

Once an archaeological site has been found, the survey team marks it out as a series of grid coordinates, usually about a meter square, and everyone walks very slowly (bent over) and picks up anything that catches their eye. When something's found, it's bagged, tagged with the grid coordinate for where it was found, and stored for sample preparation. Surveying an archaeological site is a lot like gardening – it's literally bending over and running your hands in the dirt and mud; there's a reason why archaeologists are generally glad to get graduate students. Once trained, their backs hold out longer…

Once the initial site survey has been done, and a site has been determined to be of interest, excavation begins. Excavation can be described as "Ditch digging. Only we're paying 20 grand a year in tuition to do it." Items are removed from the soil, and brushed clean, and then tagged with how far down in the soil they were. Earth removal is done very slowly, with small shovelsful at a time, so as not to break anything.

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