Taryn Reid
Back at BcGn-23, the importance of utilizing the entire available space was best demonstrated in OA1-B. The first two pictures here show what our team started with — what we in the field call “bathtubbing”. As you can see, the bottom edges of the wall curve inward. Not only does this make the operation area look messy, but it also muddles the stratigraphy and the boundaries of each stratum as well as possibly contains cultural material that would have been overlooked.
The team set to work with trowels to shave off the excess soil and straighten the walls, removing all the loose soil and collecting it in buckets to be sifted for possible artifacts. After roughly an hour, our walls looked like this:
As you can see, not only is the strata much more visible, the trench as a whole looks much more tidy and presentable — which is important for proper documentation. Furthermore, here is all the cultural material we collected from our wall cleaning:
Although this amount of material culture may not be applicable to every unit, it serves as an excellent example as to why this seemingly unnecessary practice is in fact integral to fieldwork. Only so much space is allotted for excavation, this specific unit being 1x3m, so it’s important to ensure as much of the available space as possible is utilized.
This is one of many habits I’ve picked up over the course of the last 4 weeks. I try to be as uniform as possible in every unit I work in, which is something I have not cared too much for in the past. The little details and good practices such as keeping a neat and tidy work area may seem unnecessary, but this goes to show there is value in them. Archaeology is so much more than simply digging holes, it’s a very methodical and tedious practice that requires lots of care and precision.
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