Reconstructing Archaeology

Most people imagine that archaeologist spend most of their time reconstructing the past. In fact, much of what archaeologists do when they are on-site is reconstructing the archaeology of the site. For example, this summer I’ve been working with a team to reconstruct the the excavation of a basilica style church in Polis in Cyprus.

To do this we are drawing on five standard sources for archaeological research.

1. The excavation notebooks.  There are the basic descriptions of the archaeology prepared by the trench supervisors. They are the primary sources for understanding the relationship between various events which caused the building to become an archaeological site.  The notebooks describe both the process of excavation and the remains excavated.  The notebooks provide evidence for context.  In other words, they explain how objects, buildings, and soil came into relationship with each other.

2. Finds. The finds – particularly ceramics – help us to provide the date for the various depositional events or contexts. These events could be the building of a particular wall or the paving of a space with a mortar floor or the robbing of the stones from a wall or the collapse of a roof which buried objects below the rubble.

3. Plans. Careful excavators do more than simply describe their excavation, but they also draw plans of what they see. At Polis, they also had the services of some talented architects who prepared careful drawings of the results of the excavation after each season. Part of the challenge is correlating the daily trench plans with the final plans.  Daily plans often show features or deposits that the excavators remove before the final plans can be prepared. I spend hours each day flipping between daily trench drawings and the final plans trying to understand the evolution of the site and the relationship between features that remain visible and those excavated away.

4. Photographs. To help with this is a collection of slides and photographs. These slides complement the plans and trench drawings and can often provide information on relationships that the excavators did not document in their notebooks and drawing. Incidental details like the way two walls bond or the extent of a floor can be gleaned from photographs.

5. Finally, when all else fails, I can go and look at the site! It’s a bit overgrown right now, so it’s difficult to see much in the way of detail, but like the photographs there are occasionally details of the site that excavators have missed or two decades of winter rains have revealed…