happydalek (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
happydalek) wrote2008-12-14 07:22 pm
happydalek) wrote2008-12-14 07:22 pm
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I am too geeky to live.
I realize I've been liberally peppering my lj with posts about my various archaeology jobs. What can I say? They've been kind of consuming my life lately, what with all the state-hopping, people-meeting and hotel-living. It's a rather itinerant lifestyle to have, and it's played havoc with my free time and hobbies. So since it's kind of the only thing I've got going on right now, it's getting a good bit of blog exposure. What I also realize is that I don't think I've been completely clear about what it is I've been doing, so when I throw around phrases like "phase I ground survey," it's quite possible that nobody knows what I'm talking about. So, here's a little primer on contract archaeology, all in one nifty reference post.
Okay. So, it all started in 1966 when Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). This Act, like every other that comes out of Congress, is huge and full of sections that deal with specific issues. Section 106 of the NHPA requires every federal agency to consider how its activities might affect historic properties (the general term is "cultural resources," since it also includes stuff like prehistoric Native American artifacts). On a more practical level, this means that if any government money is going to be spent on a construction project, the area where that project is going to be must first be analyzed for cultural resources, and if any were found, they would have to be protected in some way. That's where the archaeologists come in.
Construction companies frequently subcontract to environmental consulting firms (like the one I'm currently working for) to check for cultural resources before they start. Sometimes you can look at maps and other documents of the area and get a general idea of the history and geography of an area to determine where it's most likely you'll find good stuff (but that's a job for project managers and people with more degrees than me). Once that initial planning has been done (assuming it was done at all, which it very well might not have been), a crew is assembled of willing diggers with degrees in anthropology (like me), and sent forth into the area to go hunting for stuff. Usually it's done arbitrarily, to the tune of one little hole dug every 15m or so. (In my experience, all the measurements are usually metric just because of the arbitrariness, but there's no hard and fast rule that it has to be metric.) The digging is all done with a shovel, so we call it "shovel testing" and each hole is referred to as a "shovel test pit" or STP. (I know. Crazy logic.) If something suitably awesome comes out of that little hole, you dig four more little holes, one in each direction, at half the usual distance (these are called "radials"). If you find something in any of the radials, you mark it down as a "site" to be excavated more thoroughly later. Usually you dig the hole until you've gone about 10cm into the subsoil, or until you've stopped finding artifacts, whichever is deeper (but again, there are always exceptions). This whole process is called "phase I survey."
Yup, walking in a line, digging a bunch of random holes. Totally skientific. This is the kind of project I'm doing right now (only we're measuring everything in feet and inches, and digging each hole a minimum of 2ft., regardless of where the subsoil starts. See what I mean about standards?).
For many projects, phase I is as much as the archaeologists need to do. Unless they found any sites (which we rarely do, in my experience). If they did, the construction company is obligated to hold off breaking ground until the sites have been examined more thoroughly to determine if there's really anything there (like a foundation or an ancient fire hearth that could indicate a house or a village was there), or if that artifact was just a random piece of debris. This involves digging bigger, square holes called test units. It's cool getting artifacts out of the dirt, but the advantage of big, flat-bottomed, square holes is that when you get to the subsoil you can look for evidence of that other stuff (seen as uniquely shaped stains, or regular lines of brick or stone, etc.). Things are more standardized in phase II. If the artifacts that came out of the phase I were historic (meaning the site is historic), then the test units are measured in feet and inches (because in the United States that's the scale historic stuff is built in and so digging it up that way just makes sense). If the artifacts are prehistoric, then it's excavated in metric units (because Native Americans didn't have a standard unit of measure, so...er...yeah).
If the people with advanced degrees believe that the phase II was sufficiently exciting, the project goes into phase III, which is basically just a more large-scale phase II. Phase III is called "data recovery," because the goal is to get all the cultural material out of the ground and into the lab so the construction project can move forward and the archaeologists can analyze and examine with neither party inconveniencing each other. That's what I did last month in Ohio so that an oil pipeline could go through.
After the phase III is done, the whole thing gets written up as a report by the project managers and other bigwigs. People like me just do the digging. :-)
So that, in a nutshell, is how contract archaeology (also called "cultural resource management" or CRM) gets done. It's basically a blue-collar job that you need a white-collar education to do. It doesn't pay well, but you get to travel a lot and work in nature instead of in an office. It also means that you're usually under the gun to get things done fast. Your work week can be hampered by weather (like this past week when I lost a day and half of pay because we got rained out), and you can frequently end up in a "hurry-up-and-wait" scenario, unable to do anything as you wait on approvals to access land. (Which is why I may not have my job after this Friday.) And, sorry to say, it almost never has anything to do with dinosaur fossils, buried treasure, evil mummies, crystal skulls or blue police public call boxes.
A quick summary of Section 106
An awesome comprehensive blog on being a shovel bum like me.
Okay. So, it all started in 1966 when Congress passed the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). This Act, like every other that comes out of Congress, is huge and full of sections that deal with specific issues. Section 106 of the NHPA requires every federal agency to consider how its activities might affect historic properties (the general term is "cultural resources," since it also includes stuff like prehistoric Native American artifacts). On a more practical level, this means that if any government money is going to be spent on a construction project, the area where that project is going to be must first be analyzed for cultural resources, and if any were found, they would have to be protected in some way. That's where the archaeologists come in.
Construction companies frequently subcontract to environmental consulting firms (like the one I'm currently working for) to check for cultural resources before they start. Sometimes you can look at maps and other documents of the area and get a general idea of the history and geography of an area to determine where it's most likely you'll find good stuff (but that's a job for project managers and people with more degrees than me). Once that initial planning has been done (assuming it was done at all, which it very well might not have been), a crew is assembled of willing diggers with degrees in anthropology (like me), and sent forth into the area to go hunting for stuff. Usually it's done arbitrarily, to the tune of one little hole dug every 15m or so. (In my experience, all the measurements are usually metric just because of the arbitrariness, but there's no hard and fast rule that it has to be metric.) The digging is all done with a shovel, so we call it "shovel testing" and each hole is referred to as a "shovel test pit" or STP. (I know. Crazy logic.) If something suitably awesome comes out of that little hole, you dig four more little holes, one in each direction, at half the usual distance (these are called "radials"). If you find something in any of the radials, you mark it down as a "site" to be excavated more thoroughly later. Usually you dig the hole until you've gone about 10cm into the subsoil, or until you've stopped finding artifacts, whichever is deeper (but again, there are always exceptions). This whole process is called "phase I survey."
Yup, walking in a line, digging a bunch of random holes. Totally skientific. This is the kind of project I'm doing right now (only we're measuring everything in feet and inches, and digging each hole a minimum of 2ft., regardless of where the subsoil starts. See what I mean about standards?).
For many projects, phase I is as much as the archaeologists need to do. Unless they found any sites (which we rarely do, in my experience). If they did, the construction company is obligated to hold off breaking ground until the sites have been examined more thoroughly to determine if there's really anything there (like a foundation or an ancient fire hearth that could indicate a house or a village was there), or if that artifact was just a random piece of debris. This involves digging bigger, square holes called test units. It's cool getting artifacts out of the dirt, but the advantage of big, flat-bottomed, square holes is that when you get to the subsoil you can look for evidence of that other stuff (seen as uniquely shaped stains, or regular lines of brick or stone, etc.). Things are more standardized in phase II. If the artifacts that came out of the phase I were historic (meaning the site is historic), then the test units are measured in feet and inches (because in the United States that's the scale historic stuff is built in and so digging it up that way just makes sense). If the artifacts are prehistoric, then it's excavated in metric units (because Native Americans didn't have a standard unit of measure, so...er...yeah).
If the people with advanced degrees believe that the phase II was sufficiently exciting, the project goes into phase III, which is basically just a more large-scale phase II. Phase III is called "data recovery," because the goal is to get all the cultural material out of the ground and into the lab so the construction project can move forward and the archaeologists can analyze and examine with neither party inconveniencing each other. That's what I did last month in Ohio so that an oil pipeline could go through.
After the phase III is done, the whole thing gets written up as a report by the project managers and other bigwigs. People like me just do the digging. :-)
So that, in a nutshell, is how contract archaeology (also called "cultural resource management" or CRM) gets done. It's basically a blue-collar job that you need a white-collar education to do. It doesn't pay well, but you get to travel a lot and work in nature instead of in an office. It also means that you're usually under the gun to get things done fast. Your work week can be hampered by weather (like this past week when I lost a day and half of pay because we got rained out), and you can frequently end up in a "hurry-up-and-wait" scenario, unable to do anything as you wait on approvals to access land. (Which is why I may not have my job after this Friday.) And, sorry to say, it almost never has anything to do with dinosaur fossils, buried treasure, evil mummies, crystal skulls or blue police public call boxes.
A quick summary of Section 106
An awesome comprehensive blog on being a shovel bum like me.