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Kawatiri, Westport - Day 14

5 March 2008

The focus of today's work in most of the excavation areas was to draw up the plans and sections.

Because excavation destroys part of the record as it proceeds, it is very important that a full record is kept of all the features and other physical properties of a site that are encountered during the excavation.

Top:Two cooking features revealed in the wall of an excavation area. Lower: A section showing a fire feature in the wall of the excavation area. Photos: Otago University

The traditional way of doing this is by producing plan and section drawings.

Plan drawings (see Figure 1) are drawings of the surface of an excavation area after it has been cleaned down to a particular level. In practice, a number of these will be drawn as the archaeologists move deeper and deeper into the site.

Section drawings (see Figure 2) are representations of the wall of an excavation area. They record the stratigraphy of a site. The plan and section drawings are one of the most important records of an excavation and are referred to all subsequent analyses.

Figure 1

Figure 2

At this site, drawings are being made at the completion of each level of an excavation in each excavation area. Most of the walls of the excavation areas are being drawn up as section drawings.

Nowadays, digital electronic methods are available for recording plans and sections. At Kawatiri for example, we are recording all the plan information, such as the locations of artefacts and features, using a robotic total station (an electronic theodolite). We are also photographing all the sections and walls of the excavation areas. These photos are equivalent to the plan and section drawings.

Two students (Karen and Alex) drawing a section. Photos: Otago University

But the ability to create drawings as well as digital images is extremely important because a drawing is an interpretation of the record - it is created by the archaeologist as a way of representing how he or she understands the site.

The ability to draw sections and plans is one of the most important skills of a field archaeologist. As the archaeologist draws he or she must make detailed interpretations and decisions about of the finer details of soil colour, stratigraphy and site history. Indeed, in many cases it is only during the drawing phase that the archaeologist really develops confidence about the history of site construction and history.

The Kawatiri excavation is partly a field school for the University of Otago students so the site director and staff are taking extra care to ensure that each student is fully trained in this important skill - as it will be expected of them if they go into the archaeology profession.

GLOSSARY   Archaeological terminology Like any profession, archaeology comes with its own "language". This glossary helps with less familiar terms, particularly those used on this site. >> Read more

For questions about the Kawatiri excavation, contact archaeology@historic.org.nz