Digging — patience is the prime ingredient 



David Phelps has one word for what it takes to put 

 together an archaeological dig. Patience. Digging up a 

 quarter-acre site with masons' pointing trowels, 

 paint brushes and grapefruit knives is no picnic. 



Whether the work is done on the shores of the 

 Euphrates or in coastal North Carolina, the 

 archaeologist's concerns are the same: to find ar- 

 tifacts and to find them just as they were left by the 

 culture he's interested in. 



"The primary object is to find things in their con- 

 text. If you were using a bulldozer, you'd never get 

 that context. There's just no mechanical way to do 

 this," says Phelps. 



Consequently, one dig can take anywhere from a 

 month to twenty years to complete. But the archae- 

 ologist's job begins long before the actual digging gets 

 underway. Selecting a potential site requires exten- 

 sive knowledge of the environment and the people 

 he's studying . . . plus a little bit of luck. A ground 

 search of the chosen area and a couple of test digs will 

 usually reveal whether there is actually anything to 

 be found there. If so, the real nitty-gritty work 

 begins. 



The crew first digs a set of sample pits to get an 

 idea of the distribution of artifacts in the area. Once 

 that's done, there are two ways to go with the major 

 excavation. If the goal is to reclaim as many artifacts 

 as possible, the archaeologist will plan to dig up a 

 large area. But he may be interested in only one 

 aspect of the culture, such as the use of food 

 resources. In that case, the field crew will zero in on 

 specific sections of the site, such as the garbage dump 

 (euphemistically known as the midden) and food 

 preparation areas. 



The site is then divided into a grid of two meter 

 squares. Laborers set to work, digging one square at 

 a time. Within each square there may be several ver- 

 tical layers corresponding to the different time 

 periods the area was used. Each layer may be from 

 six inches to several feet deep. Workers peel back one 

 layer at a time, photographing and drawing to scale 

 all artifacts before they are removed. 



The squares link together to form a trench, which 

 can be enlarged at any section if the archaeologist 

 finds something particularly interesting. 



The actual digging is a painstaking process, usually 

 done with tiny hand tools such as grapefruit knives so 

 that nothing will be damaged. Nearly everything, in- 

 cluding fish scales, can be used to tell something 

 about a culture. After being numbered, materials are 

 taken to a lab for analysis. 



No archaeologist would attempt a dig alone. Ac- 

 cording to Phelps, the ultimate in an excavation crew 

 includes a director, ceramics expert, photographer, 

 draftsman, metallurgical expert, ethno-botanist, ar- 

 chaeological zoologist, geologist, assistant directors, a 

 number of junior archaeologists and lab and field 

 workers. Phelps, like most of his colleagues, operates 

 on a more down to earth scale. During the summers, 

 he usually works with a skeleton crew of a drafts- 

 man, lab supervisor, two assistants, two crew chiefs 

 and six laborers. 



Just in case you're tempted to begin excavating in 

 your own back yard, Phelps adds another caution. No 

 archaeological work should ever be done without the 

 proper know-how and facilities. "If the work is to be 

 worth anything, it must go to a laboratory to be 

 catalogued and preserved," he says. 



And that's another lengthy process. The analysis of 

 one month's work in the field takes an average of 

 three months. Patience. Patience. 



The University of North Carolina Sea Grant College 

 Newsletter is published monthly except July and 

 December by the University of North Carolina Sea 

 Grant College Program, 105 1911 Building, North 

 Carolina State University, Raleigh N.C. 27650, Vol. 5, 

 No. 7, August, 1978. Dr. B. J. Copeland, director. Writ- 

 ten and edited by Karen Jurgensen, Mary Day Mordecai 

 and Virginia Worthington. Second-class postage paid at 

 Raleigh, N.C. 27611. 



