Archaeological Excavation

Overview

A 20 credit module designed to introduce first-year students to all aspects of assessing, collecting and analysing primary excavation data and to provide hands-on experience of excavation and post-excavation techniques

By the end of this module and its assessment, students should be able to:

appreciate the process of reconnaisance and evaluation and its impact on excavation strategy
understand and apply excavation techniques
record archaeological features and take environmental samples
understand the process and recording of stratification
recognise, sort and care for artefacts
process field records from excavation work
process and sort environmental samples

This module allows you to develop many skills, but particularly:

Self management: you need to be punctual for work on site
Communication: you will have to communicate with your supervisor and others in the team - make sure you ask questions and learn as much as you can about what is going on around you.
Team working: this is one of the fundamental skills of this module - you will be learning how to co-operate with others in the trench and when putting together your exhibition for the end of term
Problem solving: having had a series of lectures, you will be learning how to put this knowledge into practice
World of work awareness: this allows you to understand the world of work, how excavations operate, how decisions are made, how large teams are organised, how records and kept and processed etc
Application of IT: you will be using PowerPoint for your team exhibition at the end of term

The field school is a fantastic opportunity that every student loves, and it is term time

Joanne Cooper