Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 08/28/2008 - 20:10
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Kuril Islands Biocomplexity 08

Hi Mike! This is Ryan from WDA. I have been in New York for the last month so i am just getting to this assignment.  My first question is how did you choose the sample sites and how deep did you dig?  How would you know when to stop if you didn't find anything?  I will keep reading the journal entries to give you more questions.

 

  

Mon, 09/08/2008 - 08:45

KBP Team

There are lots of pieces of information we use to decide where to dig (detailed in a journal entry on 7 August).  Once we start digging, we keep on digging until we get to "culturally sterile" sediment, or dirt that has no evidence of human occupation.
 
Why do we do that?  Well, for one thing, our permit requires it.  But the reason behind such a requirement is that if we don't dig all the way "to the bottom" of the cultural levels, then our samples will be biased against older materials. And that would be bad since we are trying to determine, to the best of our abilities, the specific times that people were living at specific places. 
 
It is true that any particular excavation unit we have chosen may not have evidence of all the time periods a location was occupied (i.e., see journal posting for 23 August).  But if we are careful about the locations and number of excavation units we dig, then hopefully we will obtain representative data.
 
---Dr. E