This is a pop quiz. Most of you will breeze through it. But if just one of you is surprised by the answer, and thereafter remembers the lesson learned, archaeology's status as a scientific discipline will be safe for another day.
You've just dug a test pit.
The purpose of the test pit was to see what's under the surface.
What you see looks like this.
The upper sediments are unbedded fines. They overlie sediments transported by a different depositional process.
You've just dug a test pit.
The purpose of the test pit was to see what's under the surface.
What you see looks like this.
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| Credit and thanks to: Jim Turenne, the photographer. Westport Vineyards, Massachusetts. |
When you dig the next hole do you treat the dark brown sediments near the surface as a "natural" level and dig arbitrary levels/spits within it? What about the pale-coloured material beneath it? What about the rust-coloured dirt underneath that?
Did you answer "Yes" to any of the preceding questions? Bzzzzzzt. No points. No! Changed my mind. You lose points!
It's completely astonishing to me that there are people out there who call themselves archaeologists who wouldn't know a soil profile if it . . . well, if it walked up and slapped them in the face in a field situation. A! Ston! Ish! Ing!
And, if you think there aren't archaeologists out there who'd have made such a colossal blunder, think again.
There are just two stratigraphic 'layers' in this view: the upper fines and the lower gravelly stuff. The horizontal colour changes are soil horizons, the result of pedogenesis—differential weathering, in situ, of the sediments themselves. They are not 'stratified' in any geological or archaeological sense of the word. To treat them as such is to waste your time and the time of anyone coming after you trying to interpret your field observations.
I'm done.
