ABSTRACT
The principles of excavation In the past people went about the business of their daily lives, waking and sleeping, eating and drinking, creating and destroying. Each of these activities had some effect on the world around them. The impact on their environment varied from the imperceptible to the radical. Equally variable are the traces of the changes made which have survived to the present. Sometimes the ephemeral is preserved by accident as with a thumb print made in once wet plaster. Other events brought about such alterations that the environmental consequences are with us today. The excavator is interested in these events and their aftermath. Objects are important too but mainly, as we shall see, for the light they throw on what has been going on.
