ABSTRACT
Leonard Woolley excavated Ur in southern Iraq with a handful of Europeans, three expert Syrian foremen, and several hundred workers. The archaeologists who excavated the Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo, England, before World War II worked almost alone, with little expert assistance (see the Discovery Box below). Recent, meticulous excavations involved a carefully organized team of experts whose skills reflected the complexity and environmental setting of the site (Carver, 2005). Furthermore, as stewards of a fragile resource, we have an obligation to preserve the past for the future, to acquire the maximum amount of information for the minimal disturbance of the resource. Let us examine, then, some of the basic skills that an archaeologist needs.
