12. Among the most obvious archaeological sites that have yielded spectacular results by excavation are the huge man-made mounds (tells) in the Near East, called in Arabic tilāl, and in Turkish tepes or hüyüks. Emergency excavations then have to be mounted to rescue whatever knowledge of the past can be obtained before these remains are obliterated forever. Another type consists of closed sites such as pyramids, chambered tombs, barrows (burial mounds), sealed caves, and rock shelters. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Excavations can be classified, from the point of view of their purpose, as planned, rescue, or accidental. Should the art treasures of ancient Greece and Egypt, now in western European museums, be returned? Resources and other practical issues do not allow archaeologists to carry out excavations whenever and wherever they choose. Research Master's student Jan Dekker reflects on his coronaproof excavation in France. Excavation, in archaeology, the exposure, recording, and recovery of buried material remains. Archaeological excavation is the procedure by which archaeologists define, retrieve, and record cultural and biological remains found in the ground. Similarly, the first cache of the Dead Sea Scrolls was discovered in 1947 by a Bedouin looking for a stray animal. The pace of Canadian archaeology quickened again after 1960. In 1958 Throckmorton found a graveyard of ancient ships at Yassı Ada and then discovered the oldest shipwreck ever recorded, at Cape Gelidonya—a Bronze Age shipwreck of the 14th century bce. But many excavations, particularly in the heavily populated areas of central and northern Europe, are done not from choice but from necessity. Updates? Insurance and Liability . Some sites, such as temples, forts, roads, villages, ancient cities, palaces, and industrial remains, are easily visible on the surface of the ground. The opening of the tomb chamber in an Egyptian pyramid is, for example, a very different operation from the excavation of a tell in Mesopotamia or a barrow grave in western Europe. Underwater archaeology is a branch of reconnaissance and excavation that has been developed only during the 20th century. The famous painted and engraved Upper Paleolithic cave of Lascaux in southern France was discovered by chance in 1940 when four French schoolboys decided to investigate a hole left by an uprooted tree. The very words dig and digging may give the impression to many that excavation is merely a matter of shifting away the soil and subsoil with a spade or shovel; the titles of such admirable and widely read books as Leonard Woolley’s Spadework (1953) and Digging Up the Past (1930) and Geoffrey Bibby’s Testimony of the Spade (1956) might appear to give credence to that view. To my great chagrin, I found out that I knew worse than… Skip to content. An excavation is not complete until the printed report is available to the world. The visible remains of the ancient past do not normally lie exposed on hilltops or in the open desert. Like many sites in the classical world, the Greek site of Olympia had been the subject of much interest, especially its statuary, which found its way into museums all over Europe. To delay publishing the results of an excavation within a reasonable time is a serious fault from the point of view of archaeological method. The “Asherah” was the first submarine ever built for archaeological investigation. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Firstly, it refers to the technique in which archaeological remains are located, uncovered and processed, as well as recorded. Israel is bursting with biblical archaeology excavation sites, and flocks of graduate students, professional researchers, and laypeople visit the country every summer to join the demanding but rewarding work of excavation. Ownership of archaeological material. They result from the accumulation of remains caused by centuries of human habitation on one spot. Gravel digging, clearing the ground for airports, quarrying, road widening and building, the construction of houses, factories, and public buildings frequently threaten the destruction of sites known to contain archaeological remains. Many are project oriented, as, for example, when a scholar studying the life of the pre-Roman, Celtic-speaking Gauls of France may deliberately select a group of hill forts and excavate them, as Sir Mortimer Wheeler did in northwestern France in the years before the outbreak of World War II. Some sites are explored provisionally by sampling cuts known as sondages. Excavation, in archaeology, the exposure, recording, and recovery of buried material remains. The very words dig and digging may give the impression to many that excavation is merely a matter of shifting away the soil and subsoil with a spade or shovel; the titles of such admirable and widely read books as Leonard Woolley’s Spadework (1953) and Digging Up the Past (1930) and Geoffrey Bibby’s Testimony of the Spade (1956) might appear to give credence to that view. Hazardous Materials & Activities . In archaeological terms, excavation has a two-fold meaning. 13. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. One element of this technique is common to all digs—namely, the use of the greatest care in the actual surgery; in artifact classification, analysis, and dating; and in the recording of what is found by word, diagram, survey, and photography. It is often the recovery of features that are almost indistinguishable from nonarchaeological aspects of the buried landscape: one example of this is the recovery of mud-brick walls in Mesopotamia; another is the tracing of collapsed walls of dry stone slabs in a cairn in stony country in the southwest Midlands of England. Archaeological excavations at the site of a 19th-century prison on Spike Island, Cork Harbour, Ireland. Professor Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge, Co-Director of the excavation, argues that the promontory with the narrow passage that joined it to Keros, acquired a central role since it was the island’s best natural harbour with commanding views of the north, south and west Aegean. Years of training in the field, first as an ordinary digger, then as a site supervisor, with spells of work as recorder, surveyor, and photographer, are required before anyone can organize and direct an excavation himself. It is located in the now unpopulated Ozette Indian Reservation Research in digital archaeology, heritage, and marginalia. Excavation is the surgical aspect of archaeology: it is surgery of the buried landscape and is carried out with all the skilled craftsmanship that has been built up in the last hundred years since Schliemann and Flinders Petrie. All forms of archaeological excavation, from design to execution, require great skill and careful preparation. Sometimes it is the recovery of features of which only ghost traces remain, like the burnt-out bodies from the buried city of Pompeii, or the strings of a harp that were found among the furnishings of Mesopotamian tombs at Ur. 2. Finally, there are sites in cliffs and gravel beds, where many Paleolithic finds have been made. The excavation was then in its ninth year. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica. Years of training in the field, first as an ordinary digger, then as a site supervisor, with spells of work as recorder, surveyor, and photographer, are required before anyone can organize and direct an excavation. Finally, there are sites in cliffs and gravel beds where many Paleolithic finds have been made. Amateur archaeology is forbidden in many countries by stringent antiquity laws. In other cases there are no surface traces, and the outline of suspected structures is revealed only by aerial or geophysical reconnaissance. At Barnénès, in north Brittany, a contractor building a road got his stone from a neighbouring prehistoric cairn (burial mound) and, in so doing, discovered and partially destroyed a number of prehistoric burial chambers. The really great excavators leave such a fine record of their digs that subsequent archaeologists can re-create and reinterpret what they saw and found. Site Safety & Health Plan. They widened a smaller shaft at the base of the hole and jumped through to find themselves in the middle of this remarkable pagan sanctuary. An extension of the runways at London Airport led to the discovery of a pre-Roman Celtic temple there. Occasionally, an amateur does make an important discovery the further excavation of which can then be taken over by trained professionals. A temple of Mithras in the City of London, Viking settlements in Dublin and at Århus, Denmark, and the original 6th-century-bce Greek settlement of Massalia (Marseille) were discovered in this way.
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