Chapter 1: Overview

Excavating archaeological sites, collecting cultural materials and samples for paleoenvironmental and chronology assessments, and recording information about an excavation has changed tremendously in the last couple of decades. This is due in part to technological advances in computers and recording equipment, such as the total station, and in part to the development of new dating methods that allow us to determine the age of sites older than about 45,000 but younger than 500,000 years ago.

Archaeologists, however, still dig at Paleolithic sites using many of the same types of digging tools as researchers used decades ago. These are mostly small tools allowing careful, controlled uncovering of stone artifacts and animals bones, such as masons' trowels, spoons, brushes, and dental picks. Occasionally, when there are large boulders that need to be removed, the digging kit can include drills, wedges, and crowbars. All of the sediment that is excavated is collected and screened to recover the very small animal bones and stone artifacts. Unlike older excavations, however, this screening process now often includes water screening (washing the dirt through a screen). Several different screen sizes (different sized meshes) are used for each bucket of sediment from each excavation area. This allows us to recover as much material as possible, and is especially important for the recovery of very small animals such as different types of rodents or snails that can give us detailed information about microclimates at a site.


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