Archaeologists

Today I went on an excavation. I choose a place because it was near a castle

and the place was also mentioned in an ancient script. The first thing I had to
do was draw a plan of the site. I did this because if I found anything I would be
able to mark it on my plan and that way I would know exactly where
everything was. After I had made my plan I started to dig. I used a brush and a
trowel because a spade could destroy any valuable evidence. I tried to collect
as many things as I could, I even sieved the soil to find bits of broken pottery,
seeds and small pieces of bones. When I was finally done I gathered every
artefact up and labelled them. I found quite a lot of interesting stuff like
weapons that were used for hunting animals, clay pots with loads of different
styles and I even found pieces of a skeleton which was beside a coin from
1434. So it is most likely the body was buried around that time. This way of
dating artefacts is called stratigraphy. I also found dark round patches in the
soil which are called post-holes. They are all that is left of the poles that kept
up the walls of the houses made in the olden time. Lines of post-holes show us
the size of the house and whether it was round or rectangular. The post-holes I
found were in the shape of a small circle. When the search was over I went
back home to studied the artefacts I had found. I found out that the skeleton I
had found died in 1426. I know this because I used carbon dating. Carbon
dating uses radioactive carbon that is found in all living things, including human
bodies. Well when things die, the carbon slowly leaks away. By measuring how
much carbon is left in a bone or a seed, a scientist can work out when it died.
But carbon dating is 20per cent off. There is also another method for dating. It
is called dendrochronology. It is used to find out how old a piece of wood is
and it is very accurate. After everything is done I then write a report and then
give the artefacts to a museum.