Digging in the Dirt

Description

This volume collects papers presented at a series of sessions at EAA and UISPP conferences. These were originally conceived as a response to theoretical approaches to archaeology from the perspective of fieldwork and practical archaeological methods, and as a way of bringing together international scholars to compare archaeological techniques. Lectures covering such topics as pre-excavation survey, post-excavation and stratigraphic analysis, and contrasting “national” methods of excavation brought the discussion much further than had been anticipated; as the proceedings show, excavation techniques differ between countries to a degree not found in such “hard” sciences as biology, chemistry or physics. The contributors here present a range of methodological diversity, in accounts of how archaeologists dig in their countries: stratigraphically, non-stratigraphically; with different documentation systems, tools, terminology, ties with geologists and geoarchaeologists, ways of training and organising workers, and more.