Sun 27 Mar, 2016 09:24 pm
describe daily life for archaeologists during a dig. I want to know.
@Butrflynet,
hmm that doesn't really answer my question tho
@Butrflynet,
Still this doesn't really Help Because I want to know what a typical day is like on an archaeological site
@mcdimple,
Read The Source by James Michener. It's fiction, but well researched. It's not devoted to archaeology, but there are some good insights.
@roger,
One of my favorite books as a kid. Well researched as to methods and how the archaheological dig introduces each interpreted "layer" and its story.
@Setanta,
A good book about the many aspects of the daily life of archaeologists is
The Practical Archaeologist by Jane McIntosh. (Ed II).
@farmerman,
Submit your travel voucher and expense receipts:
resubmit in 14 days..
Not in the field, but from what I can gather the job entails going out into the middle of what today is considered nowhere, usually in someplace hot as hell, and digging down maybe a foot a day into sun-drenched ground with great care lest you damage whatever artifacts might be where you are digging. Every now and then you might come across something, or a piece of something, that adds to knowledge of the time.
The extreme care that must be taken not to damage artifacts rules out the use of such modern conveniences as Caterpillar heavy construction equipment, so a site under excavation for two years gets as much dug up as construction workers using modern equipment can accomplish in a day or two.
So during the daytime, the picture can be summed up in two words: Dig and Sweat. At nighttime it's a different story, apparently a great deal of young students of both sexes are attracted to archaeology, so there's likely a pretty good amount of hanky panky going on then. Then when dawn breaks, it's back to Dig and Sweat.
@Blickers,
Actually, in the US and other urban countries , who care about their heritage, identifying and investigating an archaeological site is a requirement to development (or land rape, as I prefer to call it).
Most of the US sites are contiguous to urban centers or at nodes of major federally funded hiways, and initial construction either blunders on to something archaeological or else there's a Cultural Heritage Form (or whatever a state calls it) which must be completed in which the applicant must show (with evidence) that NO sites of important history or prehistory exist within a specified distance from the edges of the proposed development(this obviously includes the proposed development land as well)
@33export,
Ha, youve been reading my e-mails