Tuesday, November 07, 2006

"One of the things you develop is an aesthetic sense of dirt," Time's Secrets, Unearthed
Dirt is so important that archaeologists don't do anything so vulgar as actually dig it. They sort of gently coax it aside: "Please, Mr. Dirt Clod, would you kindly move?"

I know this because Heather Bouslog , assistant archaeologist for the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, invited me to help excavate a Civil War-era site not far from the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal.


It's a neat little article and what he says is true so read the whole thing. One caveat though: Artifacts found in the same layer of dirt come from the same time, so it's important to know exactly what kind of dirt you're working with. Almost correct: artifacts in the same layer of dirt can be assumed to have been deposited at the same time; but they were not necessarily produced at the same time.