Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 08/25/2008 - 17:46
Forums
Kuril Islands Biocomplexity 08

How many test pits have you dug?

Andrew H-F

Thu, 08/28/2008 - 15:38

KBP Team

HOW MANY SITES/EXCAVATIONS Andrew -
Trying to work out the average number of sites, or excavations per island, is a bit tricky because the size and geography (especially regarding "habitable" landscape) is highly variable. For instance, the island of Ketoi is reasonably large (~8 km diameter, or 5 miles across), but even so, we have not been able to find any archaeological sites there. I have mentioned this island before: its shoreline is very steep and rocky and does not have much room for human habitations. In contrast, some of the smaller islands we have visited, like Ryponkicha (~3 km or ~2 miles long), have lots of landscape suitable for people and have large village sites on them. Some of the larger islands are 115 km (70 miles) long!
Keeping all of that in mind, here are the numbers for the project. This summer the archaeology teams (survey and field camp) visited 11 different islands. We visited 23 separate archaeological sites on those 11 islands. And we dug 20 discrete excavations of one sort or another, some of which were very small "test" excavations or clearing off of vertical exposures of eroding sediment.
Over the duration of the whole project (2006-2008), we visited 19 different islands, documenting 77 different archaeological sites. Over the three field seasons, we have dug 131 discrete excavations of one sort or another, some of which were very small "test" excavations or clearing off of vertical exposures of eroding sediment.
--Dr. E