Sorry if the flair tag is wrong, but as the title suggests, how do archaeologists find fragile items like these without damaging them? At first I thought they would need shovels or heavy equipment to get below the surface, this however seems like a risky method. Do they find the fragments then later piece them together? Do they use tiny tools and those little brushes all the way down to the extraction point?
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Excavations are done very carefully by trained personnel.
However, they don’t just do out and find a spot and say “We’ll dig here!”
They usually start an excavation at a specific site for a reason. Either it’s their best guess at the location of something long lost (based on other sources of information), or someone happened to find something in that location that made them think there would be more of that kind of stuff there.
A lot of the time, construction reveals something worth investigating. The construction can get shut down while the archaeologists figure out the extent of the historical value of the site.
Or, maybe a hiker discovers a dinosaur bone sticking out of the ground and reports it.
So, when they’re working in an area where they know there are delicate artifacts, yes, they remove the soil very slowly and carefully.
They can also use tools like ground penetrating radar to get a grasp on how deep the stuff they’re looking for is, which lets them know how deep they can go with diggers or shovels before changing their approach.
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