Excavation Techniques Research Articles

Nuclear Excavation Design af a Transisthmian Sea-Level Canal

This paper presents an up-to-date analysis of the application of nuclear excavation technology to the design of a sea-level canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This analysis is based on the technical data obtained to date under the auspices of the Atlantic-Pacific Interoceanic Canal Study Commission. Consideration is given in this paper to use of nuclear methods in the construction of a sea-level canal through the Darien region of Panama (Route 17) and the Atrato-Truando region of northwest Colombia (Route 25).The site data required for a comprehensive nuclear excavation design analysis of a proposed sea-level alignment include information pertaining to site topography, geology, hydrography, hydrology, meteorology, seismic propagation characteristics, bio-environmental conditions, and medico-ecology. These data are being used, together with data pertaining to nuclear explosive characteristics, cratering characteristics of pertinent geologic media, nuclear cratering detonation effects and channel design criteria, to develop an engineering-safety-cost analysis which is the basis for the nuclear excavation design.The results of geologic investigations to date along the 46-mile Route 17 alignment indicate that ~20 miles of the alignment through the Chucunaque Valley encounters a weak saturated clay shale while the balance of the excavation would be through relatively competent rock. In view of the unfavorable long-term slope stability characteristics of these shales, techniques were developed for using nuclear explosives to produce linear craters that have initially flat slopes of the order of 7 to 9°. Experiments indicate that nuclear excavation using a two-pass, triple-row array detonation system may offer a solution to this problem.A preliminary analysis of the topography and geology along the Route 25 sea-level canal alignment through northwest Colombia indicates that conventional excavation techniques, primarily hydraulic dredging, would be the most reasonable method of excavating ~78 miles of the 100-mile alignment. The remaining 23 miles of the alignment, through the Continental Divide, would be excavated using nuclear explosives.Studies in progress pertain to the safety aspects of using nuclear methods to construct a transisthmian sea-level canal, including consideration of seismic propagation, airblast acoustical wave phenomena, and radioactivity release. The results of such studies to date indicate that the potentially damaging effect on buildings from ground motions resulting from seismic propagations from the nuclear detonations will be the major factor in determining the maximum aggregate yield that can be detonated at any one time along the selected alignment.

Nuclear excavation: review and analysis

Nuclear excavation appears to be an economical, practical and beneficial utilization of nuclear explosives. However, up to the present time, the technical, political and psychological implications of this application have presented a formidable barrier to its general acceptance. Nuclear cratering technology has been developed to the point where meaningful predictions of crater and channel sizes in selected media can be made with confidence. Continuing research is underway to extend basic cratering knowledge to saturated, fine-grained, and stratified media. Significant advances have been made in the evaluation of the magnitude and extent of the potential safety hazards associated with an underground nuclear cratering detonation. The state of the art of nuclear excavation is such that many projects appear feasible at the present time. The most apparent applications are concerned with the excavation of harbors, reservoirs, canals, and aggregate production. Nuclear excavation techniques provide a method of alleviating potentially catastrophic situations which could result from floods, landslides, and volcanoes, where all other measures would be less effective. The development of nuclear excavation into a standard engineering tool will be determined by factors not related entirely to its technical feasibility. The various political, social, and emotional pressures involved in its use will weigh heavily in its ultimate acceptance. The success of contained underground detonations for mining applications will significantly affect the future of nuclear excavation. Recent international discussions of nuclear nonproliferation have focused worldwide attention on the potential of nuclear excavation. Its acceptance appears to be only a matter of time. Nuclear excavation will come of age after the first project has been successfully completed. How long it takes before mankind can benefit from this new engineering tool greatly depends on an international willingness to cooperate in beating this all-powerful sword into a plowshare.

Plough-marks, Lynchets and Early Fields

The archaeology of early agriculture in Britain was succinctly summarized five years ago (Bowen, 1961). Since then, and largely stimulated by that publication, further work has produced some useful results, not only in the new and continuing field surveys which the author sought mainly to encourage but also by experiment and excavation. Our concern here is primarily with the application of excavation techniques and subsequent molluscan analysis to the study of early fields (cf. Tubbs and Dimbleby, 1965), our discussion arising largely from work carried out since 1961 and in particular from our own excavations in 1966.

The Construction and Uses of a Laboratory Archaeological Site

AbstractIn view of the demonstrated value of small-scale site replicas to archaeological field training, a full-scale experimental site was constructed and shown to be of value in training personnel in archaeological techniques and in investigating various problems of archaeological field procedure. This site, built on the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California, was excavated by student groups ranging from junior high school through college who had differing amounts of previous field experience. The effect of age and experience on recovery efficiency and depth of interpretation was studied, as well as the reactions of students to excavation of an artificial construct, and in the case of those with no previous experience, to archaeological field work in general.In addition to that section of the site devoted to problems connected with instruction, a section was designed to investigate a series of relatively simple methodological problems. Problems of stratigraphy, seriation, and relationship between size of artifact, soil color and texture, and excavation technique were investigated, with successful results. Such a site has great utility in field instruction, where its superiority over certain natural sites can be demonstrated, and in controlled investigation of various excavation and interpretive techniques. Such a site is relatively easy to construct, and the Santa Barbara laboratory site is now a continuing project.

The Rural Archaeology of Roman Gaul

For obvious reasons, any question concerning the rural archaeology of the Roman West is likely to begin and end in France, and the necessity of taking the French evidence on any given topic into account is something of which non-French historians and archaeologists do not need to be reminded. The fact that such evidence is so often unsatisfactory and incomplete is frequently ascribed to inferior excavation techniques or methods of presentation, but although this is all too often the case a large part of the trouble seems to stem from the lack of proper co-ordination with regard to problems and programmes of study. It happens to be a fact that French archaeologists, in this particular field, are not always interested in the same topics, and are consequently not asking the same questions as their English counterparts. The questions and interests that lie at the back of the excavator's mind as he works are bound to colour the content and composition of his final report, and, unless these questions and interests are brought into the open and written down, the value of the material he provides is bound to be limited. Consequently, any publication which, however slightly, sets out the principles and aims of French rural archaeology is to be welcomed.

En gammelkretisk gåde

En gammelkretisk gåde

Plains Archaeology, 1935–60

AbstractA review of archaeological research in the short-grass Plains and adjacent Prairie regions shows that although early travelers observed evidences of the prehistoric occupation of the area, no systematic archaeological work was undertaken until very recently. The publication of Strong's Introduction to Nebraska Archeology in 1935 opened the quarter-century of growth which was at first characterized by intensive surveys and testing, then by the excavations sponsored by the federal relief agencies, and since World War II by the large-scale salvage work connected with federal water-control programs, especially the Missouri Basin Project. These salvage operations have produced an enormous body of new data on all major time horizons and from all parts of the Plains, as well as an awareness of the rich potential of Plains pre-history. The scope of these operations has required a high degree of cooperation between research organizations and has led to the development of new excavation techniques, especially those involving heavy earth-moving machinery. Efforts to organize these new data have resulted in a uniform method of site designation and broadly applicable artifact classifications, but no scheme for culture classification to replace the Midwestern Taxonomic System which has been the conventional method of expressing cultural similarities. The direct historical approach to the problem of the ethnic identification of archaeological complexes, settlement pattern studies, and the relationship between man and environment, which have long been major interests of Plains archaeologists, continue to dominate the interpretive scene.

Ungdommelige Oldtidshuse

Ungdommelige Oldtidshuse

Nels C. Nelson and Chronological Archaeology

AbstractA series of papers at the 24th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, in Salt Lake City in 1959, was devoted to Developments in Dating Techniques, and dedicated to Nels C. Nelson in recognition of his pioneering role in establishing the technique of stratigraphic excavation in America. During his work in the Galisteo Basin of New Mexico in 1914 he dug a series of ten 1-foot levels, classified all the sherds found in them into seven types, and calculated their frequencies by levels. These resembled sections of normal distribution curves, and demonstrated that statistical analysis of data from arbitrary levels could reveal chronological change just as could data from physically distinct strata. Within a few years this technique was employed by several other archaeologists and it continues to the present to be an indispensable technique of investigation.

Gudmund Hat

GUDMUND HATTLike a fresh squall - squall indeed, for breeze is too light a word - Hatt came storming in the Twenties in over archeological field-work in Denmark, at least the field-work which covered settlements house-sites and fields, especially of the lron Age. True that the National Museum had experience in these matters, but its people were at that time to a degree inhibited by the old and somewhat tyrannical excavation technique worked out in the Nineties, which could allow the archeologist to return home from his site with service fully paid to the square-meter-system rather than to the realities of life which it covered. When Hatt came to the National Museum he was already, in other fields than the archeological, a tried and mature research-worker. He broke through. He was not one who would stand still before an established technique. A score of years ago I had occasion to write the following, from personal experience, about Hatt's contribution:"It can scarcely be doubted that several of the earlier investigations of settlements, which describe culture levels, stone-settings, and the like, in fact dealt with remains of houses, the type and extent of which were not recognised. That stone-settings on lron-Age settlements as a rule do not comprise the actual house-sites but on the contrary the area immediately surrounding them (the cobbled yards, roads and paths) is a view which we owe to Hatt's researches, just as it is he who has taught Danish archeologists the difficult art of recognising the traces of prehistoric houses which have not been destroyed by fire."Hatt united a clear and powerful breadth of view with a close attention to detail. With massive energy, untiringly and with harsh demands upon himself and others, Hatt threw himself into his work - with results that measured up to the effort. Look only at his literary production! The whole way of life and work, the basic premises of existence of the Iron-Age farmer is here illuminated by a wealth of facts. Long will researchers dip into the overflowing cauldrons of Hatt's treatises. His two main subjects are, of course, prehistoric houses and prehistoric fields. From site to site he moved his tent over north and west Jutland, quartering his ground like a burly buzzing bumble-bee. Skørbæk Solbjerg Fredsø Ginderup Rødklit Nørre-Fjand Oksbøl - a handful only among a riot of flowers. And for the recognition, demonstration and preservation of our prehistoric fields of Jutland Hatt was pioneer and prophet.It must give him satisfaction that the next generation of Danish archeologists can do other and more than passively accept and exploit his achievements. That they also can pioneer!Johannes Brøndsted

Worms and Weathering

It is a little surprising that in spite of the relatively high standard of excavation techniques current in Britain today so little attention has been paid by practical excavators to the processes of formation of the sites which they dig.All of us recognize, of course, that a site consists of a sequence of deposits, some formed deliberately and usually rapidly by man, and others more slowly by nature; and that some processes of formation, such as erosion and filling by the plough, are still continuing today. But there seems to be a widespread assumption (though it is difficult to be sure of this, since such things are seldom discussed) that once a constituent layer of a site has been formed, and sealed by another layer above it, it becomes immediately fossilized and remains unchanged until examined by the excavator, perhaps several millennia later. It is equally widely supposed that once an object, large or small, has come to rest in or upon a deposit it will remain in that position for all time. In short, the tacit assumption is that once formed the nexus of finds and deposits which constitutes a site is almost wholly static, and that change, if it occurs at all, occurs only at the surface.

Kongemosen

Kongemosen

Vindblæs-fundet

Vindblæs-fundet

The Early Plan and Town Houses of Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum)

The 1938–9 excavations at Calleva, of which Mrs Aylwin Cotton's report has recently appeared (1), show how much more can be learnt about a Romano-British town when modern scientific excavation technique is used to supplement the efforts of earlier antiquaries. George Fox, St. John Hope and Mill Stephenson (to whom all honour) achieved the complete plan, labouring from 1890–1908 each year for months at a time at the total excavation of the hundred acres within the city walls. Now Mrs Cotton by selective excavation and a study of stratigraphy has built up the outline chronology so urgently required : thus we have now both a Map and a Time-Chart for this city. Mrs Cotton's report shows that the original Roman city extended up to the outer earthwork, hitherto thought to be of pre-Roman construction, covering an area of some 230 acres (2), and that the walls with a slightly earlier bank behind them are a contraction of the latter half of the 2nd century A.D. (3) The evidence was clear ; the metal of the streets and layers of dark occupation soil of Hadrian-Antonine date continued under the bank (4)) and the streets continued on the same alignment in the space between the wall and outer earthwork (5). Of the street plan Mrs Cotton observes (6) inter alia that the chessboard ‘ is singularly rectangular ’ and that ‘ it did not exist, at any rate in its later form when the Bath Building in Insula XXXIII was built about the reign of Nero ’. It was these two comments and their footnotes that sent me searching the shelf with Archaeologia ranged heavily along it, and that prompted this article.

Dr. Franz Weidenreich on Human Evolution

A NUMBER of interesting papers by Dr. Franz Weidenreich are to hand. "The Trend of Human Evolution" is published in Evolution (1, No. 4 ; Dec., 1947), and "Some particulars of skull and brain of early hominids and their bearing on the problem of the relationship between Man and the Anthropoids" appears in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 5 (N.S.), No. 4 (Dec., 1947). In an article in the American Anthropologist, 45, No. 1 (Jan.–March, 1943), Dr. Weidenreich once again affirms his belief that Neanderthal man was the ancestor of Homo sapiens. The majority of physical anthropologists will probably not agree with the theories set forth in "The Neanderthal Man and the ancestors of Homo sapiens", but nevertheless Dr. Weidenreich can never be ignored with impunity. The last article comes from the Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II, 4, No. 1 (Nov., 1941). It is a lecture on the site and technique of excavation of fossil man in Choukoutien, China. No anatomical details of the finds are given ; but the student will find conveniently set out the story of the discovery and the excavation.

Dr. David Randall-Maclver, F.B.A

DR. D. RANDALL-MACIVER, the accomplished archæologist and anthropologist, was born in 1873, and educated at Radley and the Queen's College, Oxford, where in 1896 he obtained a first class in Literœ Humaniores. It had been his youthful ambition to devote himself to the pre-Columbian cultures of America, but as this seemed impracticable, he came easily under the influence of Sayce and Grenfell at Queen's, and learned the technique of Egyptian excavation with Flinders-Petrie. He was the first holder of the Laycock Studentship for Egyptology at Worcester College (1900–6) and in 1907 directed the Eckley B. Coxe, jun., Expedition of the University of Philadelphia to Egypt and the Sudan; publishing also with Arthur Thomson a detailed anthropometric study of ancient Egyptian skeletons.

Verulamium

This splendid volume contains the definitive record of the excavations carried out by Dr and Mrs Wheeler at Verulamium between 1930 and 1934, and it was complete in every essential save publication at the time of Mrs Wheeler's death in April 1936. It forms the final monument of an archaeological partnership which had astonishingly developed the technique of large-scale excavation on Roman sites in this country in a series of operations whose major landmarks were at Carnarvon, Brecon, Caerleon, and Lydney ; excavations distinguished from others of their kind not so much perhaps by the technical skill of their direction, though in this matter too they have been second to none, as by their pre-eminent excellence as training schools of archaeological method to the students who flocked to them, and as aids to right thinking by the ever-widening archaeological public which they did so much to create. Mrs Wheeler has her memorial in many places : publicly in the London Institute of Archaeology and privately in the hearts of all who knew her ; but many will think of this volume as peculiarly instinct with her genius, for every page of it bears witness to the comprehensiveness of her organization, the discipline of her energy, the patience of her leadership, and the vital sureness of her touch. Non extinguetur in nocte lucema eius.