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[These posts are excepts from The Archaeology Coursebook by Jim Grant, Sam Gorin and Neil Fleming. This is an introductory text book which should prove useful in writing about archeologocal methods for stargate fic.]
(Note: Excerpts from the complete text)
Excavation-Part Five: Key Concepts-Features and Cuts:
Features are traces in the soil of past human activity. A distinction can be made between
• Constructed features which were deliberately built such as a wall, fish trap or pond
• Cumulative features which develop from repeated actions. Middens, hollow-ways and the shallow gullies known as drip rings which encircled round houses are good examples.
While some features are obvious, many are not. Only the faintest traces of a stakehole may survive as slight variations in the colour or texture of soil only detectable by an experienced excavator. Many small features such as ditches or postholes may in fact be elements in one larger feature which is only revealed when excavation recording is complete. The term ‘cut’ is increasingly used to describe dug features such as pits, ditches and postholes.
The site below is seen topstripped before Green’s (2000) research dig. The major features or cuts are revealed as discolorations in the chalk but excavation was required to identify them. They proved to be a ring of pits with a central pit 10m wide and 1.5m deep. Hidden in this pit was a burial of a woman and three children and a 7m deep shaft down to a seam of flint.
Figure 2.6 Features at Neolithic ritual site at Monkton Up Wimborne
Figure 2.9 A ‘cut’ feature quartered in order to give four internal section profiles
(Note: Excerpts from the complete text)
Excavation-Part Five: Key Concepts-Features and Cuts:
Features are traces in the soil of past human activity. A distinction can be made between
• Constructed features which were deliberately built such as a wall, fish trap or pond
• Cumulative features which develop from repeated actions. Middens, hollow-ways and the shallow gullies known as drip rings which encircled round houses are good examples.
While some features are obvious, many are not. Only the faintest traces of a stakehole may survive as slight variations in the colour or texture of soil only detectable by an experienced excavator. Many small features such as ditches or postholes may in fact be elements in one larger feature which is only revealed when excavation recording is complete. The term ‘cut’ is increasingly used to describe dug features such as pits, ditches and postholes.
The site below is seen topstripped before Green’s (2000) research dig. The major features or cuts are revealed as discolorations in the chalk but excavation was required to identify them. They proved to be a ring of pits with a central pit 10m wide and 1.5m deep. Hidden in this pit was a burial of a woman and three children and a 7m deep shaft down to a seam of flint.
Figure 2.6 Features at Neolithic ritual site at Monkton Up Wimborne
Figure 2.9 A ‘cut’ feature quartered in order to give four internal section profiles
