Excavation PDF

Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 4 EXCAVATION Harriet Hawes (1871–1945) discovered art and archaeology while an undergraduate. She fell in love with Greece and traveled alone through the countryside on a mule. No one allowed her to exca- vate, which was considered “men’s work.” Fortunately, a few archaeologists encouraged her, among them Arthur Evans, who was excavating the Palace of Minos at Knossos in Crete at the time. With their quiet backing, she traveled through the island in 1901, again on a mule, and discovered the ruins of a Bronze Age town on a low hill close to the north coast, now known as Gournia. With the aid of a hundred workers, she exposed a town of sixty stone houses in three seasons in 1901, 1903, and 1904. Gournia was a major trading center with a small palace, which reached the height of its prosperity around 1700 BC, being destroyed by ﬁre around 1450 BC (Figure 4.1). Hawes and her working companion Blanche lived in two rooms over a coastguard storehouse, which they shared with a colony of rats. The discoveries included a bronze forge, a carpenter’s house complete with his tools, even a cobbler’s last, ﬁshhooks, and net weights. Hawes presided over the raucous laborers with a wage bill of $200 a week. During her long archaeological career, she volunteered as a nurse in three wars, giving up excavation to lec- ture about the horrors of modern warfare. A tough, no-nonsense excavator, Harriet Hawes, once almost forgotten, is now recog- nized as one of the pioneers of modern excavation. Today’s excavations are carefully managed projects that require creative thinking. There are, of course, general methodologies for excavation, but the appropriate ones vary from one site to the DOI: 10.4324/9781003183556-6 Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 52 EXCAVATION Figure 4.1 The Minoan town at Gournia, Crete, excavated by Harriet Hawes. Georgis Tsichlis/Alamy Stock Photo. next—and from moment to moment as the excavation unfolds. Think of archaeological excavation as a process of negotiation that balances the acquisition of as much information as possible against the realities of potential destruction of a ﬁnite archive and the needs of contemporary society. Remember that the ﬁrst principle of excavation is that digging is destructive. All excavations, whether a tiny hunter-gatherer camp site or a city mound or shipwreck, require careful planning and a formal research design. As Martin Carver, former director of England’s Sutton Hoo ship burial site, reminds us: “Excavation is the greatest fun imaginable—exciting, companionable, poetic, like a theater group, there for each other whether the run is to be long or short.” How right he is! But despite the fun, excavation is also a serious business. Since digging destroys the archaeological record, it means that all excavators must pay careful attention to record keeping. As the site is dug, each archaeologist must ensure they create a comprehensive archive in its place—through speciﬁc site-record sheets, drawings, digital recording, site diaries, and so on. All ﬁnds must be logged, and all material investigated. Everything on site stems from the research design, which very often has not only a speciﬁc site focus, but a broad regional one as well. When the National Park Service had to excavate and stabilize a 1,000-year-old earthwork once surrounded by a wooden palisade, Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 EXCAVATION 53 the excavator, David Anderson, investigated the mound and its complex internal structure revealed by remote sensing. He also had to protect it against the encroaching Tennessee River, which was eroding the deposits. He combined carefully designed trenches with a stabilization program and multidisciplinary research which answered questions about dating, the adoption of maize agri- culture, and other topics. The archaeologists also consulted the local Chickasaw Nation as conservation proceeded. A classic example of the process of excavation comes from the numerous ﬁeld seasons between 1969 and 1978 spent by Illinois archaeologists James Brown and Stuart Struever excavating the Koster site in the lower Illinois River Valley. They excavated at least twelve human occupations from about 5100 BC to just before AD 1000. The site is more than 9 meters deep, but such that each living surface had to be exposed suﬃciently to reconstruct changing activities over the centuries. Brown and Struever organized an on-site data-processing system that was elaborate for the day, covering everything from animal bones to artifacts, vegetable remains and other ﬁnds (Figure 4.2). The Koster excavations were based on a sound research design and oper- ated on a large scale, making this a classic example of large-scale North American excavation. No wonder the aforementioned digging maes- tro, Martin Carver, compares excavating to performing surgery! PRESERVATION Most of the time, all that one ﬁnds are the more durable artifacts, such as stone tools or pottery. This is why so much of archaeology Figure 4.2 From dig to lab and database. A classic example of the data ﬂow system at Koster, Illinois. Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 54 EXCAVATION appears to be dreary catalogs of slowly changing tools. Don’t knock the value of such lists, for they are the main way in which we classify and order the past (see Chapter 5). The environment is harsh to human artifacts and causes deterioration and drastic mod- iﬁcation to them. Colors fade, and texture, weight, shape, and chemical composition can all change. Chemical, physical, and biological agents cause the damage. Chemical agents are everywhere, for the atmosphere contains water and oxygen, which creates numerous chemical reactions, like the corrosion in metals. Water temperatures diﬀer; sunlight irradi- ates materials; and atmospheric pollution causes chemical reactions. Rapid chemical change can aﬀect buried objects, especially as a result of dampness. Acids in the soil can contribute to deterioration and dissolve bones. Physical deterioration results from wind, water, and sunlight. Cycles of wetness followed by aridity crack wood and cause rotting. The list of destructive agents is long. Physical agents can operate on a small or large scale. The massive earth- quake that ﬂattened the Roman town of Kourion in western Cyprus in AD 365 devastated not only the community but also the surrounding countryside. Archaeological sites decay and change from the moment they are abandoned. Many are buried in soil deposited by wind or rainfall. The activities of burrowing animals, even earthworms, can wreak havoc with stratigraphic layers. Late Ice Age rock shelters in southwestern France were occupied intermittently by hunter-gatherer groups between 50,000 and 15,000 years ago. Some of the larger ones contain densely packed layers of hearths, ash accumulations, boulders, even decaying shelters. Some, like the well-known La Madeleine rock shelter on the banks of the Vezère River, were occupied for months on end, especially when salmon were running, or reindeer herds migra- ted in spring and fall. While it is normally the more durable, inorganic artifacts like stone tools, mudbricks, or metals that preserve best, ancient peo- ples used many organic materials like leather, wood, skin, and textiles. The desert peoples of western North America relied heavily on plant ﬁbers and baskets, hardwood digging sticks, as well as bows and arrows. Many such objects survive in near-perfect condition in dry caves visited over thousands of years. Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 EXCAVATION 55 FAVORABLE PRESERVATION CONDITIONS The fantastically rich tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun is the only such sepulcher ever discovered intact. The Egyptologist Howard Carter took eight years to clear the burial and the tomb. The dry conditions preserved delicate fabrics, the king’s personal furniture, funerary beds, even his chariots, broken down in easily assembled parts (they were drawn by small horses, even ponies). Dry conditions have preserved all manner of objects, notably baskets and textiles along the Peruvian coast and naturally dried- out human burials in Southwestern pueblos. We know a great deal about the health of ancient Egyptians, whose medical conditions and pathologies survive in their mummiﬁed corpses. Other spec- tacular burials came from Sipán in the Lambayeque Valley in northern coastal Peru, one of the driest environments on earth. The arid conditions preserved the lavishly furnished sepulchers of over a dozen individuals, including three lords of the Moche state. Each wore full ceremonial regalia, including golden masks, as well as gold and silver jewelry (Figure 4.3). We know from scenes painted on Moche pots that these were warrior-priests, who pre- sided over warfare and ceremonies that involved the sacriﬁce of prisoners of war. In life, the lords in their golden regalia would Figure 4.3 Replica of the tomb of a Lord of Sipán, Peru. Frans Lemmons/ Alamy Stock Photo. Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 56 EXCAVATION have glittered in dazzling displays of political and spiritual power— like gods on earth. Waterlogged and ﬂooded sites can seal oﬀ organic ﬁnds in oxygen- free atmospheres. Danish archaeologists have found wooden dugout canoes deep in ancient peat bogs, along with leather clothing, traps, and hunting and ﬁshing equipment. Their most spectacular ﬁnds include the well-preserved corpses of sacriﬁcial victims buried in bogs about 2,000 years ago. We can gaze on Tollund Man’s serene face and know that he did not eat for at least twenty-four hours before his death, having consumed a porridge of barley and wild grasses. The celebrated Ozette whaling village on the Paciﬁc coast in Washington State was occupied by Makah Indians for more than 2,000 years right into the twentieth century. The thick mud preserved much of several cedar longhouses, as well as a multitude of wooden ﬁshhooks, wooden bowls, and whaling harpoons. The site was excavated with ﬁne pressurized water jets that washed the mud from the soft wood. Arctic ice and permafrost eﬀectively refrigerate the past and preserve the minutest details of clothing and personal possessions. In 1993, Russian archaeologist Natalya Polosmak excavated an undisturbed burial chamber on southern Siberia’s Ukok Plateau dating to between the sixth to second centuries BC. Polosmak thawed an ice-ﬁlled log coﬃn by pouring hot water into it. The casket contained the body of a twenty-ﬁve-year-old woman wearing an elaborate headdress. She was 168 centimeters tall, and was lying on her left side, her hands folded in front of her. An intricate tattoo of a mythic creature adorned her right shoulder. The woman wore a woolen skirt and a yellow silk top, perhaps from China. Six horses had been killed with axe blows and lay in the pit next to their mistress. These various discoveries are very much exceptions, for most archaeological sites yield but a fraction of the organic materials once buried in them. This makes the problem of bridging the gap between past and present a central concern, even under the most favorable conditions. THE PROCESS OF DISSECTION Almost invariably, a lay visitor to an excavation will ask how you know where to dig. It is worth saying that the answer varies Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 EXCAVATION 57 according to the country, and who is doing the digging. For example, most archaeologists in the UK are told where to dig (since in the UK most excavations are legal requirements, to be undertaken ahead of building development work). Before such archaeologists do anything, they trawl past publications to produce a many-paged “desktop assessment” of the area. For those working on pure research-led projects, then where to dig was once often an arbitrary choice, relying on a scout of the region, looking for surface ﬁnds and other clues. But today, with subsurface radar and geomorphological studies, site testing has become far more sophisticated. Such testing has assumed great importance, particularly in the USA, where CRM (Cultural Resource Management) projects dominate much ﬁeld archaeology. Core borers can probe sites for diﬀerent layers, but lines of small test pits laid out across sites are commonly used, the trenches often called “telephone booths,” an apt description. Dissecting a stratiﬁed archaeological site depends on numerous variables. Among them are preservation conditions, site size, and complexity. In the longer term, the objective is to expose the stratiﬁed levels. This can be done by exposing the deposits in very thin arbitrary layers up to 10 centimeters thick. As the excavation deepens, so the cultural and other layers are exposed in the walls. One can then extend the excavation to study the human occupa- tions in detail. VERTICAL EXCAVATION Many people make a somewhat arbitrary distinction between ver- tical and horizontal excavation. Vertical excavation is just that— digging limited areas of a site for speciﬁc information on dating and the stratiﬁed layers below the surface. Sometimes called stratigraphic excavation, this is at its most challenging in caves and rock shelters, where space is limited. Hidden boulders from ancient rock falls and other obstructions make such excavation challenging. Vertical tren- ches are used to obtain artifact samples, to establish sequences of ancient building construction or histories of complex earthworks, or to salvage sites threatened with destruction. Dust Cave lies in a limestone bluﬀ on the middle Tennessee River in northwestern Alabama. Hunter-gather groups visited the Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 58 EXCAVATION cave irregularly between about 800 and 1600 BC, accumulating occupation levels that reach a depth of 5 meters. Preservation conditions were excellent, so animal bones, pits, hearths, and clay ﬂoors survived intact. The excavators started with these pits, and then expanded the cutting when they encountered stone tools. Finally, they excavated a large 2-meter by 12-meter trench down to bedrock, carefully isolating each occupation level, passing the soil through 6- millimeter screens or water, the latter a process known as ﬂotation (see Chapter 7). Changing stone projectile point styles enabled them to identify diﬀerent stages in the occupation. HORIZONTAL EXCAVATION Horizontal excavation is again as its name suggests, in this case the exposure of wide areas of a site to uncover house plans, settlement layouts, and other large features. Few archaeological sites are ever fully excavated, except small hunter-gatherer camps, isolated structures, and burial mounds. When large areas are to be exposed, areas representative of the entire settlement are cleared, using controlled research designs. The ﬂamboyant British archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler (1890–1976) cleared larger areas by exca- vating formal grids of small trenches separated by what he called baulks. These provided stratigraphic control over the entire exposed area. The problem with this approach is that diﬀerent activities took places in separate areas, so one may miss some of them (Figure 4.4). Large, open excavations require accurate recording over con- siderable distances. But this has become much easier when the exact positions of houses and even small ﬁnds can be recorded in seconds with a total data station, an electronic distance-measuring device with a recording computer. The resulting data can be downloaded onto a laptop. Any form of horizontal excavation is expensive, so much so that earthmoving machinery is often used to remove sterile layers. In the hands of a skilled operator, this can be a surprisingly delicate process and saves time. An example of horizontal excavation that relied in part on machinery comes from the Grewe site, a 1,100 year-old Hohokam Native American village in the modern-day Phoenix area of Arizona. The excavators exposed about two dozen Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 EXCAVATION 59 Dimensions of Baulks 16 16 2 3 2 16 1 IVC 16 Grid Square Number — III C II C 16 16 15 14 13 N Square Number 2 12 11 10 9 3 8 7 6 5 Excavated Bottles Structure 2 Bottles 4 3 2 1 Well IVB 16 III B II B 16 Figure 4.4 A horizontal-grid excavation at Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, showing the layout of the squares relative to the structure being excavated. courtyard groups, complexes of semi-subterranean pit houses that shared central courtyards and food roasting pits. The groups in turn surrounded a large plaza. The largest comprised twenty-six houses and covered more than 600 square meters. Careful excavation revealed that only a few houses in each group were occupied at one time. Most of the households comprised no more than about ten people. Furthermore, the courtyard groups were occupied for various lengths of time, some for centuries, others for a few generations. The arbitrary subdivision between vertical and horizontal exca- vation is commonly used, but it disguises a much more ﬂexible Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 60 EXCAVATION reality. It is important to use the most appropriate methods for the site and the problems at hand. After all, what really matters is how things actually were in the past. Just reading a stratigraphic proﬁle is an art. You have not only to record the layers, but also interpret them, taking account of natural formation processes as well as human activities. This means watching for the subtle color changes resulting from the decay of adobe bricks on pueblo sites or the ﬁne lines of hearths used for a short time, whose edges have spilled over a slight slope, or the loosely packed outline of a rabbit hole abandoned many centuries ago. Inﬁnite patience is essential, as you examine the wall in diﬀerent lights, at dawn or in the oblique sunlight of evening. A ﬁne water spray, even looking at a trench wall from below, can pay rich dividends. Com- plex stratigraphic jigsaw puzzles are part and parcel of excavation. TOOLS OF THE TRADE Archaeological excavations are, ultimately, a process not only of observation, but of maintaining a permanent record. Trench walls are always vertical—or should be—surplus soil is dumped well clear of the cuttings. An excavation is a laboratory and is treated as such. The number of people involved can be merely a handful of students, volunteers, or paid workers, all under the supervision of the director, or a series of site supervisors. Many large academic and CRM digs involve teams of specialist excavators, who either visit the site or are there all the time. When British archaeologist Francis Pryor excavated a waterlogged Bronze Age site at Flag Fen in eastern England dating to about 1100 BC, he worked with a timber expert, soil scientists, authorities on ancient metallurgy and animal bones, and even a specialist on prehistoric beetles. The beloved symbols of the ﬁeld archaeologist are the triangular bricklayer’s trowel and the shovel, but, of course, they use many other devices apart from earthmoving machinery. The trowel is especially versatile, for its point can be used to remove soil from a delicate ﬁnd, while the edges are ideal for scraping ﬁne layers smooth. Worn-out dental instruments, even sharpened nails, are ideal for cleaning delicate skeletons, while brushes of various sizes are essential. Laptops, portable GPS units, electronic recording equipment, and smartphones are all part of today’s ﬁeld kit, too. Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 EXCAVATION 61 EXCAVATION PROBLEMS We have described vertical and horizontal excavation and some of the challenges of excavating such sites as hunting camps and rock shelters. But it is worth describing a few other types of archae- ological site which are commonly investigated. Mound sites accumulated as a result either of deliberate human activity, as is the case of a burial mound, or from the accumulation of natural and humanly created layers at one location over a long period of time. The “tells” (occupation mounds) that occur in southwestern Asia were long the objective of early excavators. The German archaeologist Robert Koldeway worked at Babylon from 1899–1914, where he ﬁgured out how to dig mudbrick structures. His colleague Walter Andrae dug the Assyrian capital, Assur, on the Tigris River in northern Iraq, from 1903–1914. Both worked on a large scale, as did the British archaeologist Leonard Woolley, who excavated the Sumerian city of Ur of the Chaldees with its magniﬁcent royal burials from 1922–1934. Such excavations have given way to the realities of expensive ﬁeldwork. Large city mounds like those of Ur or the Indus valley civiliza- tion city of Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan can only be explored by cutting into the edges of the mound in large steps or by combining both vertical and horizontal tranches. Today’s tell excavations are selective, slow-moving, and tend to be focused on speciﬁc pro- blems. There are, of course, numerous much smaller occupation mounds, but they still require relatively large-scale excavation if the objectives expand beyond merely obtaining an impression of the stratigraphic sequence. Burial mounds, as opposed to occupation mounds, come in many conﬁgurations, from conical tumuli to long communal sepulchers and elaborate tombs built for Siberian chiefs. Whatever their size and purpose, any burial mound presents complex exca- vation problems, sometimes requiring total excavation. Many burial mounds, like those of the Hopewell people of eastern North America about 2,000 years ago, rose in stages, or the dead were interred in them at diﬀerent times, even if the identities of the original occupants were forgotten. They may have ultimately belonged to the same kin groups and been revered ancestors, which is why they were buried in the same place. Such ancestral Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 62 EXCAVATION burial places may have been used for centuries and often also served as territorial markers, placed at conspicuous points on the landscape. A generation ago, such mounds were often excavated com- pletely down to the ancient land surface below them. But today carefully placed vertical trenches are most commonly used, with excavation being used only to answer speciﬁc questions about dating or length of use. For example, at Easton Down near Ave- bury in England, Alistair Whittle excavated part of a communal burial mound to acquire pollen and mollusk samples from the original ground surface. He was able to show that the mound had been erected on open grassland. Earthworks and forts. Many societies, among them the Maori of New Zealand and Iron Age peasants in western Europe, as well as the Hopewell Indians in Ohio, built extensive earthen fortiﬁcations to protect their settlements and sacred places. Investigating banks and ditches is a matter of vertical excavation, but exposing the ﬂatter enclosed areas within the defenses is a much greater opera- tion, involving extensive, and expensive horizontal excavation. The interior of great hillforts like Maiden Castle in southern Eng- land were far more than just fortiﬁed villages, as were pas (fortiﬁed villages) erected by Maori chiefs. These were in use until the nineteenth century when raiding and warfare were endemic. Temples and ceremonial sites are often of considerable size; witness the Pyramids of Giza and major Maya ceremonial centers, and also Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which were symbolic replicas of entire sacred landscapes. Shell middens are vast accumulations of abandoned shells, ﬁsh bones, and other food remains, as well as traces of human occu- pation. They are commonplace in coastal regions like around Tokyo Bay in Japan, in northern and southern California, South Africa, and along the shores of the Baltic Sea in Scandinavia. Such sites are challenging to investigate, for occupation levels are hard to identify and statistically reliable samples of food remains and arti- facts are often diﬃcult to obtain. Shell midden excavation is unspectacular at best, commonly conducted with pits sunk by random sampling of the deposits. Much depends on slow-moving excavation and the ﬁne screening of the deposits for tiny food remains such as ﬁsh and bird bones. This means that the results Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 EXCAVATION 63 often emerge from detailed laboratory analysis rather than digging. Identifying diﬀerent ﬁsh species and mollusks requires slow- moving research at the laboratory table. In the end, however, the ﬁne-grained results can yield fascinating information on such topics as the seasons at which people visited the midden, perhaps to hunt migrating waterfowl. Burials and cemeteries are the stereotypical ﬁnds of archaeology. The golden mask of the pharaoh Tutankhamun, the refrigerated bodies of Siberian horsemen, desiccated mummies from Chile’s Atacama Desert—these reﬂect humanity’s abiding concern with the afterlife. The earliest African burial, of a two-and-a-half- year-old child nicknamed Mtoto, interred 78,000 years ago, comes from Panga ya Saidi cave north of Mombasa in Kenya. A Neanderthal child deliberately buried at La Ferrassie rock shelter in southwestern France dates to about 41,000 years ago. People have subsequently buried their dead in isolated, shallow graves within their settlements, under hut ﬂoors, in special cemeteries in caves, as cremated ashes in clay urns, and in vast burial mounds. The dead are a vast repository of information about not only their lives, but also their social status. Grave furniture is a barom- eter of ranking, especially the regalia adorning skeletons, like the elaborate clothing and ornaments worn by Maya lords around AD 500. Commoners were sometimes merely wrapped in mats or with a string of beads; merchants or priests often lay with distinctive objects associated with their status. A woman buried in northern Greece around the time of Christ lay on a bronze-adorned bed. She wore six gold laurel leaves from a wreath around her head and may have been a priestess of the god Apollo. Burials are, of course, a rich source of information on age, nutrition, sex, disease, and medicine, especially if they are well preserved. For example, the isotopic chemistry of the Amesbury Archer’s teeth revealed that he spent his youth in Central Europe (see Chapter 10). Excavating burials is a slow-moving process. Delicate skeletons, like that of Mtoto, are lifted in blocks and excavated in the laboratory. Most commonly, the skeleton is exposed in place, together with its grave goods and associations with other burials, if it is in a cemetery. Once the grave outline is identiﬁed, by a stone, or simply from the discolored grave ﬁlling, the main outline of the Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 64 EXCAVATION burial is traced ﬁrst. Then one uncovers the bones in place, taking care not to disturb any grave furniture found with them. Once the entire grave is recorded and photographed or drawn, the burial and any accompanying items are lifted one by one or encased in a cocoon of plaster of Paris and metal strips. REBURIAL AND REPATRIATION Burial excavation may seem very romantic. In reality it is not only technically demanding, but also raises important ethical questions. For years, archaeologists casually dug up Native American burials and other graves all over the world, some of them even of people of known tribal or historical identity. Today Native Americans, and Australian Aborigines, among others, are objecting strenuously to excavation and destruction of ancient burial grounds—and with good reason. Why should their ances- tors be dug up and displayed in museums, they argue? Many surviving communities retain strong emotional and religious ties with their ancestors. Excavation of their remains ﬂies in the face of their religious beliefs. There are now demands for reburial of human remains stored in museums. The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 establishes two main requirements. First, all federal agencies and museums receiving federal funds are required to inventory their holdings of Native American human remains and associated funerary objects. They must also develop written summaries for religious objects not found in graves, sacred artifacts, and what are called “objects of cultural patrimony” that are in the collections they control. This inventorying process, which will take years to complete, also requires that agencies and museums estab- lish, as well as they can, whether their individual holdings have cultural aﬃliations or, in the case of skeletons, lineal descendants with living Native American groups. They are required to notify the relevant Native American organization about the existence of the materials and to oﬀer to repatriate them. The second requirement protects all Native American graves and other cultural objects found within archaeological sites on federal and tribal land. This requirement encourages the in situ preserva- tion of archaeological sites, or at least those parts of them that Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 EXCAVATION 65 contain graves. It also requires anyone carrying out archaeological investigations on federal and tribal lands to consult with aﬃliated or potentially aﬃliated Native Americans concerning the treatment and disposition of any ﬁnds, whether made during formal investi- gations or by accident. NAGPRA mandates a level of consultation and concern for Native American rights that is far greater than has been the norm in the United States. As many as 600,000 Native Amer- ican human skeletons may be in museums, historical societies, universities, and private collections. The signing of the 1990 Act came after years of controversy that pitted, and still pits, Native Americans against scientists. The archaeologists and anthro- pologists argue that revolutionary new research techniques are beginning to yield a mine of new information about ancient North Americans. To rebury the database for such research would deprive science, and future generations of Americans, of a vital resource. Others, including some archaeologists, respond that this is an ethical and moral issue, and such considerations should outweigh any potential scientiﬁc gains. Native Americans feel deeply about repatriation for many complex reasons—if nothing else because they are concerned about preserving old traditions and values as a way of addressing current social ills. There will be no quick resolution of the repatriation issue, however promptly and sensitively archaeologists and their institu- tions respond to Native American concerns and comply with the provisions of the 1990 Act. Only one thing is certain: No archae- ologist in North America, and probably elsewhere, will be able to excavate a prehistoric or historic burial without the most careful and sensitive preparation. This involves working closely with native peoples in ways that archaeologists have not imagined until recently. Nothing but good can come of this. Excavation is a demanding responsibility, for we archae- ologists are far more than merely digging up the past. As Martin Carver reminds us, we are creative artists, who bring the dead to life through survey, excavation, and subsequent analysis. This is a process of creative synthesis, whose credibility depends on the care and thoroughness of our work in the ﬁeld and in the laboratory. Archaeology: The Basics; by Brian M. Fagan and Nadia Durrani Format: Bormat (129 × 198 mm); Style: Basics; Font: Bembo; Dir: C:/Users/IS6557/Desktop/ARTB/9781032024837_text.3d; Created: 29/11/2021 @ 16:37:33 66 EXCAVATION FURTHER READING Martin Carver, Archaeological Investigation (Abingdon, UK: Routle- dge, 2009), is the ﬁnest, most thorough description of the chal- lenges of excavation ever written. A volume in the Archaeologist’s Toolkit is valuable: David L. Carmichael, Robert H. Laﬀerty III, and Brian Leigh Molyneaux, Excavation, is vol. 4 in this important series, with a strong conservation ethic and CRM orientation (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2003). See also Steve Ros- kams, Excavation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Thomas Hester, Harry J. Shafer, and Kenneth L. Feder, Field Methods in Archaeology, 7th edn. (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2009), contains invaluable essays on excavation and is a standard work for American archaeologists.

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