Excavation Skills!

[Unitof1]

whats a context sheet?

[Steve H]

In our office subsoil refers to layers between the ploughsoil and the natural (sometimes called the natural subsoil just to confuse people) and can be colluvium, alluvium or the kind of arable subsoil associated with ridge and furrow.
Of course this is just archaeological short-hand, for those of us (the majority) who are not soil scientists, but are more concerned with cultural remains.

Perhaps a course on natural features would be useful for undergraduates (and us old lags too!). What on earth is a tree bowl? how does it form? What does it mean?

[kevin wooldridge]

What on earth is a tree bowl? how does it form? What does it mean?

Never heard that expression before. Tree bowl?? Did you mean tree throw? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_throw

[Steve H]

Never heard that expression before. Tree bowl?? Did you mean tree throw? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_throw

I know what a tree throw is (crescent shaped hole left by the tree falling over, bringing its root bowl with it), I've dug up prehistoric ones and seen modern ones after the 1987 storms.
The problem is, many excavators seem to interpret any oval hole with a low amount of cultural material as a 'tree bowl', but after 20 years digging I still don't know what they are!

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

I've heard this one 'tree bowl/bole' been used as well, though trying to explain to some people that just because a dead feature has had a tree/bush sinking its roots through it doesn't mean it was not a real feature in the first place!!

[makapanman]

Thanks again folks. Nice to see some of my ideas coming up and some new ones too.

I am looking at practical activities we can do as well as some classroom based.

[kevin wooldridge]

I wondered if there was some confusion between a 'bowl-shaped depression' which might be left by the collapsed root system of a tree or bush and a 'tree-bole' (which on my understanding is the above ground part of the root system and the tree trunk up to the level that the first branches begin)....Is the expression 'tree bowl' in common archaeological usage in some parts of the UK? I tried googling 'tree bowl*archaeology' and got no hits....

[Jack]

A tree bole is the root and trunk (bottom of the trunk I think).

Not all tree-related feature is created by a tree falling over. Some trees/shrubs boles are pulled/dug out or burnt out.

I have even seen tree boles (stumps) being blasted out of the ground with slow-dynamite (I have interesting relatives!)

I've also heard tree grub-hole (my favourite).

I'm so sad that when on holiday/ going for walks I love investigating modern tree-throws and grub-holes. I've seen some that scarily look like dug pits where a tree with a certain root structure falls in such a way that the whole root bole comes out of the ground leaving a negative feature with fairly good edges all the way round......xx(

[kevin wooldridge]

Maybe a quick spin through an updated archaeological glossary could be a valuable lesson if 'tree-bowl' is anything to go by. I would sign up for that course.

I seem to be totally out of touch with modern day 'DigSpeak'....(I recently had to have someone explain to me what the expression 'hench' meant in terms of describing a fellow digger...)

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

Maybe a quick spin through an updated archaeological glossary could be a valuable lesson if 'tree-bowl' is anything to go by. I would sign up for that course.

I seem to be totally out of touch with modern day 'DigSpeak'....(I recently had to have someone explain to me what the expression 'hench' meant in terms of describing a fellow digger...)

Same here I think-what IS a 'hench' by the way??