Survey and Excavation

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Survey and Excavation

• How we find archaeological sites, and what we do
  with them

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Archaeology as a field discipline

• Need to do it to understand it
• Popular image vs. reality
• Field work vs. laboratory analysis
• Field Schools
• This summer Schoharie Valley field school, SUNY
  Albany NYS Museum

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Archaeological Survey

• Determined by research design
• Sampling
• Cant look/dig everywhere have to sample area
• Sampling bias (some sampling strategies will
  differentially find some types of sites and not
  others)
• Sampling Strategies
• Judgmental (prior knowledge)
• Random (no bias)
• Systematic (patterned bias)
• Haphazard (unknowable bias to be avoided)
• Goals of Survey
• Locate and map archaeological sites on the
  landscape
• Sample the contents of sites to see if further
  investigation is warranted

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Survey Techniques

• Windshield survey
• Surface survey
• Shovel Test Survey
• Auger survey
• Crop marks
• Satellite Imagery
• Remote Sensing

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Surface Survey
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Remote Sensing
Ground Penetrating Radar
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Aerial Photography
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Crop Marks
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Satellite Images
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Case StudyRichard MacNeish and the Tehuacan
Valley Survey

• MacNeish major figure in American Archaeology
• Major Question where and how was agriculture
  developed in New World?
• Farming the most significant development in all
  of human history

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MacNeishs Research Design

• Problem where and when was corn (Zea mays)
  domesticated?
• Background probably domesticated form of
  Teosinte, probably from Southern Mexico
• Data Needs preserved early corn in
  archaeological context
• Methodology Intensive survey of dry caves in
  Tehuacan Valley

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Maize and Teosinte
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Mexico
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Results of Survey

• Surveyed 575 square miles identified 450 sites
  over 12 cave systems
• Radiocarbon dating - extensive chronology over
  10,000 years BP
• Coxcatlan Cave Site identified corn cobs carbon
  dating to 5,000 BC
• intermediate between Maize and Teosinte

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Coxcatlan Cave, Tehuacan Valley
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Excavation

• Goals
• Recover and record Archaeological Data
• Maintain control of context association
• Provenience 3-dimensional location of
  archaeological data
• Horizontal vs. Vertical patterning (time vs.
  space)
• Trade off Area vs. Depth
• Sampling Conservation Ethic

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Context and Association

• Key concepts in identifying archaeological
  patterning
• Contextlocation and circumstances of
  archaeological data
• Associationobjects within same context are
  associated