Digging 41: Matrix

The ultimate result of any excavation is the publication of a paper. For small digs, it can be a brief report in a local journal; a larger one will maybe get into The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and a big, interesting dig might get a stand-alone monograph, perhaps even in the form of a hard-back book at 60 quid a pop.

All the photographs, drawings, plans, measurements and written record-forms are also archived, so that any scholar can access them, and if necessary completely re-interpret the site, as scholarship moves on.

Record keeping (of everything) is essential, as the process of digging usually destroys the evidence. The thing that makes sense of all the thousands of bits of paper and numbers assigned to things is....THE MATRIX (sound effect of orchestra going" Dum, Dum, Duuuummmmm!) This is a graphic representation of all the pits, graves, walls, layers of soil etc etc etc on a site, showing how each is physically related to each.

If a wall foundation trench is seen to have chopped through the legs of a skeleton, the code number for the foundation trench is shown in a box on the matrix, higher up the page than (and with a line joining the two) the code number for the grave.

I'm trying to generate a matrix just for the graveyard, at the moment.



My brain hurts