Methods

Archaeological methods and techniques used at open sites are basically the same as those used at other types of sites. In fact, techniques devised during the early history of archaeology as a distinctive discipline in nineteenth-century Europe, England, and the Americas were nearly all developed at mounded open sites. These center upon plotting the site’s location within a specific landscape, mapping the site surface prior to excavation; documenting surface materials; digging small, carefully placed, deep trenches to reveal site stratigraphy; and cutting larger, shallower openings chosen to reveal horizontal variation in deposits at a few occupation levels.

Depending on the size and nature of the site, and upon the research objectives being pursued there, archaeologists select a series of sampling and recovery procedures to obtain detailed information on architectural, artifactual, and ecofactual (i. e., archae-obotanical, geoarchaeological, and archaeozoologi-cal) remains. As at any and all sites, careful attention must be given to postdepositional disturbance or destruction of the deposits being investigated. Such disturbance results from geological and biological processes. The former are referred to as ‘geoturba-tion’, and include flooding, erosion by water and/or wind, freezing and thawing, and slope failure. The latter are forms of ‘bioturbation’, a category that includes burrowing by many different kinds of animals from earthworms to badgers, as well as effects of plant roots up to and including those of large trees. Major alteration and destruction of archaeological deposits also result from more recent human activities on older cultural deposits and materials, for example, the digging of storage pits, burial pits, or house foundations, or simply the trampling, kicking, and scuffling of older sediments by later visitors or residents at the site. All such factors and processes must be understood before archaeologists can reveal the human stories recorded by mounded and unmounded cultural deposits at open sites.

See also: Asia, West: Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Akkad; Butchery and Kill Sites; Shell Midden Analysis.