Basic Excavation Techniques

Hey, everyone! I’m Gary, and this is my fourth year with the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project. I live in Three Rivers (a few pipes up the river from Niles) with my chocolate labrador Jack. I recently graduated from WMU with a degree in Anthropology. 

As a member of the staff, I spend most of my time in the field assisting students with basic excavation techniques, including methods for working around and removing roots from their units. Accordingly, if you’ve ever tried to dig in an area near trees, you know how frustrating roots can be. Here at the field school, we teach three basic methods for removing roots. If the roots are pinky size or smaller, we use pruning shears, and for larger roots, we use loppers (see photo). However, if the roots are too large for the loppers or protruding through the sidewall of a unit, we use a modified handsaw, which we put together a few years back. Meaning that, we installed an offset handle on a semi-aggressive handsaw blade.  We like this method because it’s simplistic, versatile, and enables us to maintain clean, flat profile walls (see video).