How to Organize an Archaeological Dig

If digging through dirt, sifting sand through screens and taking endless
photographs of pottery shards sounds like high adventure to you,
consider organizing an archaeological dig. You're more likely to find
broken bits of artifacts than the lost ark, but meticulous planning will
prepare you for discoveries large and small.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Major in anthropology in college and plan to spend six to 12 weeks of your junior or senior year in field school (translation: days and days of digging). Follow with a graduate degree and then a year or so of basic experience (translation: more digging, usually under hot sun or in dense underbrush, for miserable wages). Now you're ready to organize a dig--at least, as long as you're not planning to ask for federal funding, which would necessitate your publishing a thesis and becoming a member of the Register of Professional Archaeologists (rpanet.org).

2. Select a site and develop a research design--a statement of what you are trying to learn, not just what artifacts and features you're looking for. Once you have this, work out a methodology. For example, a study of a Civil War encampment sets out to learn who actually lived there, what they ate and what kinds of weapons they had. The methodology would involve excavating in search of dispersion patterns to locate building footprints, likely walkways, the location of outside gates and so forth, and not just artifacts.

3. Get an adequate permit. Some countries have stringent antiquity laws. In the United States, each state often lists its requirements on its Web site (usually under the subject heading "Historic Preservation"). Some even allow you to download permit applications.

4. Establish the budget and the number of people to involve. Determine if you'll need any experts on site to work alongside students and volunteers.

5. Identify laboratory experts to whom you will send samples, and determine ahead of time their preferred submission procedures. There are labs all around the world certified to do carbon 14 dating, although you may want to send simpler core samples to a soil-testing lab, which can date the age of the soil through context (analyzing the presence of various pollens, for example).

6. Survey the area surrounding the excavation zone. Locate sources of water, roads and known current settlements. Arrange housing and food for the entire team. Purchase equipment for the field staff or issue detailed lists instructing participants to bring some of their own tools and supplies.

7. Invest in top-quality trowels. Always choose pointing trowels and margin trowels, not brick-laying trowels. Have them professionally sharpened before the dig and then re-sharpen them with a file in the field. Include flat and rounded shovels. For digging units, use flat shovels to skim off 4 inches (10 cm) of soil at a time; for test pits you want smooth-sided holes, and there's nothing harder than digging a round hole with a square shovel.

8. Design any preprinted forms and field notebooks to use for recording data. Agree on the measurement tables to rely on when recording data. Either metric or English is acceptable, but everyone involved must stick with the chosen scale.

9. Plot a topographical map of the dig site and decide precisely where to dig. Determine a sampling strategy for the digging. It's neither practical nor prudent to attempt to expose an entire site. Set up field squares by running a long line straight north-south and pulling units from it by running other lines to form 3.3-foot (1 m) squares.

10. Assign the field and square supervisors. Field supervisors oversee multiple squares--the areas of excavation within the overall grid. Each square supervisor is in charge of recording everything from the sequence of excavation to an inventory of artifacts found within that square. Instruct diggers to write on every single bag in the field the date, project, provenance, name and what's in it. They must do this every time and never rely on memory.

11. Establish basic procedures for all diggers to follow. For example, a second person should verify any important measurements. It's easier to verify a measurement in the field than it is to try to explain to the lab person why the depth works out to 16 inches above ground level.

12. Plan for publication. The true completion of an expedition occurs not when the workers leave the site, but when the information they've amassed has been assembled in a meaningful way and made available to the world.

Tips & Warnings

• See 402 Save Historic Properties and Landmarks.
• A complex expedition may require highly specialized professionals such as ceramists (experts on pottery), paleoethnobotanists (experts in the study of ancient plant life) or osteologists (experts in the study of human skeletal remains).
• The equipment requirements for even a relatively simple dig are extensive, from pickaxes to dental picks, wheelbarrows to washing buckets, sledgehammers to sieves. Add to this the daily need for bags, notebooks, photo boards, scales, pens, tape and so on, and the difficulty of obtaining supplies in some regions, and you'll soon realize you must meticulously research the equipment list.
• Remind newcomers never to carry sharpened trowels in the back pockets of their pants.

[AmyRay]

on 4/27/2007 Don't forget! You need someplace to clean, record, conserve and store much of what you pull out of the ground. This is your data and–—because you excavated it--it now needs a "new home" until it is studied and published.