Archeology is a guessing game. We hypothesis, analyze, postulate – trying to understand what is happening in our trench and what that says about what is happening in the surrounding area. This can be difficult. Nothing an archeologist says is 100 %. Rather it is what we can piece together through our finds and observations of buildings. The joints of a wall can tell us the time period in which that wall was built as well as when it was built in relation to the other walls of the building. The texture and height of a surface or feature can tell us about the uses of that building, whether the floor is original or was added later and what this later addition might mean, the quality of the floor can be reflective of domestic uses or industrial uses with a finer quality generally domestic and the presence of more fill indicating industrial. There are so many things that archeologists consider when analyzing our work.
I remembered this today as Ellen and I continued work on Trench AC 4A. The ever-incredible Claire began this Trench last year. Now it is being continued by a rotating team of Ellen, myself, and Catherine and Ian (who are both working in other sections of the Acropolis currently). We began today by trying to understand the nature of our current floor surface. In one corner of the trench there is a feature that connects to the bedrock running through the center of our trench. Because of our current level and its relation to the threshold into the building that is Trench 4, we were confused over whether or not we were hitting surface. Previously, my team and I had opened a new locus because of the change in surface, soil texture, Munsell color, and the presence of a large amount of floor bricks in part of the trench. All of this indicated to me that something had changed and it was time to consider whether or not the previous locus had ended. In the course of cleaning this area, we realized that our possible “surface” was very rough in a very un-surface like way. Rocks stuck up everywhere with compacted soil in between. There was no mortar present, only fill. Ellen and I were left so confused by this surface that I called upon the combined powers of Kirby, Lizzy, Howe, and Maia to help us hypothesis what was going on and to understand how we should work with the surface.
I had originally thought that we would reach a surface after going through this layer of compacted fill but as conversations with Kirby, Lizzy, Howe, and Maia went on, it became clear that we had in fact already found surface, or rather, we had missed surface. What ever had been there was now destroyed. Not necessarily by us though undoubtedly we damaged it. There were small signs throughout the trench, a surface here and there, stones at the same level. The surface might have already been severely damaged to the point that we did not recognize it for what it was. Or it could have been so thinly visibly as to be destroyed with the movement of a small pick.
Ellen and I worked to clean this “un-surface”, a fill that had been placed to create the level surface that was now missing. At some point in the yet-determined future this fill will be removed in order to reach bedrock or another surface. This is archeology. Not necessarily a guessing game but the educated connection of many things to hypothesis the original condition/state of the locus and of the trench. What I had done was call upon the powers of Kirby, Lizzy, Howe, and Maia to help me postulate the original state of AC Trench 4A Locus 1. They helped my team and I come to an educated conclusion regarding our trench – one that helps us understand the missed surface in relation to the greater acropolis.