Archaeologica.org

in posting a reply to minimalist i got to thinking about this strategy that most archaeologists use in their work. what is the best way (money and cost excluded) to excavate a site and garner the most information?

what influences do you think shape the view of those professionals when the decide to dig and how? should they make minute progress or should they concentrate on those finds which are larger and which contain more detail and provide the most informatin?

please try to follow up your answer with a why/why not response, so we can not misunderstand anyone and have a good discussion.

I had to go with "Depends."


If Time...Money...and Labor were not limited then perhaps an entire site could be excavated at once.

But they are always limited.

I had to vote depends.

I want the entire sight excavated because I just really want to know, NOW.
And now I sound just like my children, the grown ones cause my younger two rarely whine.

But, if excavation might destroy the site, I believe you should wait until there is a method of excavating which won't damage things. Unless there is a fear of looters, in which case you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Now, how was that for waffling my way around the subject.

I think it definatly depends.

New digs requires the coordination of planning, funding and implementation through the process of publishing results. Having all those factors come together at once is a rarity ... so, it depends on each particular situation.

I have to go with depends because there are so many factors to consider, such as money, time labor force, size and whether or not the site was discovered in the process of development. I agree with the idea that we should leave something for future generations to uncover hopefully in a time when science has come up with better ways of analyzing them.

If you did it all at once there would no excuse to go to Greece every summer!

Barracuda wrote:If you did it all at once there would no excuse to go to Greece every summer!

Ouzo and gyros?

I prefer Retsina and Domales!

Barracuda, I hereby bequeath my share of all the
retsina (resin!) in the universe to you.

I remember going to a small dinner party a long time ago here in the US where the hostess insisted on serving the retsina before we opened any other wine. An hour after we had all tasted it, our glasses were not empty, and the bottle still sat on the table with a few fingers of that "turpentine" still inside.....

Somehow we forced ourselves to finish it off after about an hour and a half, in order to get to the next bottle of something French or Italian, which was emptied in about 15 minutes.

de gustibus non disputandem

in order to get to the next bottle of something French or Italian,

In vino veritas

--Titus Flavius Vespasianus

I suppose that Retsina is an acquired taste.

Legend has it that a Greek city was about to be overrun by invaders, and they threw pine branches into the wine vats to ruin the wine. The invaders were forestalled, and when the people returned, some found they liked the wine with the pine!

I used to buy it by the case, but I became fond of good old American Jack Daniels along the way. I still like Retsina with a plate of Dolmales and Ziti

Well, back to the topic...I, too am of the "it depends" school.

I can't quite make my mind go the "ideal" scenario of having all the time and money in the world to dig everything up and restore it. At some point the question has to be "what's the point?"
And there's the rub.
Do we need to dig up every artifact? In every country?
From every age? I think the answer is no...so you start to prioritize, and that means not only which sites you dig, but
how much of each one.

And another point, if we could dig everything up and put it on display, we'd need another planet to house it.

I'd say Leona Conner has the right idea. But the only case I can think of offhand in which one should just recover as much material as possible (with proper cataloging and documentation, one would hope) would be that in which the entire venue is about to be destroyed by development, etc. Otherwise, the practice of many (or most) teams in leaving some of the site untouched certainly is the right one, since the technology and our understanding of what is relevant (and even what is and what is not artifact material) is continually evolving.

what is the best way (money and cost excluded) to excavate a site and garner the most information?

OKAY now that you all answered the question your way, here it is again and please look at what is being said.

DO NOT take money and cost into account because that is something that clouds theissue and does not always include THE BEST WAY:

i have given it a lot of thought and my position will put me in contrast to kitchen and others but to me, it seems that leaving sites partially unsearched is a style which hinders the quest of the archaeologist.

knowing that Kenyon was one of the first to champion the partial dig style and many jumped on hr bandwagon, for whatever reason, i still do not see it as a beneficial way to uncover the past.

too much is lost by leaving grids untouched and especially context of the remians. how do we know that we are actually close to what really happened when we only have a partial story?

what is the benefit to the present if we leave information buried for future generations? i do not buy into this future technology crap because we do not know how long it will take to invent a better way of analyzing a site if one gets invented at all thus possible vital information and data is lost due to someone's 'good intentions'.

also, future technology gets the shaft because the site has been destroyed along with the context of the artifacts because of the inquisitiveness of the past archaeological work. if partial recording and analysis works then a complete record would just be as valuable in the future.

i am looking at how we can get the most complete information possible while leaving conjecture and hypothesis in the dust. plus answer a few more questions while solving a few more mysteries.