I Volunteered for This?! Life on an Archaeological Dig
Ross, our grid supervisor, is a daring and intuitive archaeologist. He
believes in swift action. There are times when, goaded by the inquisitive
expedition architect, he becomes impatient to find the answers. He will not
hesitate to pull a wall down or tear a floor apart in order to disentangle the
stratigraphy. “A good archaeologist,” Dr. Stager told me one day, “knows
when to go fast and when to go slow.”
Under Ross’s guidance, the grid soon began to make much more sense.
The confusing, disconnected bits of information began to tie together. On the
drawing board of the architect, as if by magic, suddenly appeared whole
buildings, rooms, thresholds and courtyards. Ross practices one of the basic
precepts of excavation: “To proceed by making reasoned guesses on the basis
of insufficient evidence.”
Each grid supervisor’s findings are regularly put to the severe test of the
“phasing session.” In this brainstorming exercise, participants include the
grid and square supervisors, experienced archaeologists from other grids, the
architect, the associate director and the director. For a rich and puzzling grid
like ours, we would spend hours working toward a logical, reasoned understanding of “relationships.” Dr. Stager demands strong evidence. How were
the mosaics associated with the walls? Were there two or more phases to t