Everytime I see clips of these archaeologists dig stuff, I can’t help but wonder how do they know where or when to stomp their shovel into the ground? It seems to me that if you aren’t for certain, your digging could easily damage or break a potentially great discovery.
I’ve seen anything from shovels to excavators and they seem to go pretty hard into the dirt.
So how do they know how much force to hit and make sure they don’t cut or destroy such ancient and delicate items?
In: Earth Science
There are many techniques that can be loosely categorized as invasive (using an excavator), minimally invasive (manually troweling) and noninvasive (ground penetrating radar). The selection of excavation technique depends on the initial information gathered about the site locality and what is feasible for the project in terms of money and time. Different archaeologists in different areas of the world have different excavation preferences based on their research topic and geographical area. Mistakes unfortunately do happen, but when the research is important to society, it is unusual that the artifacts are not handled with care.
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