Classical Studies 2500A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Urban Revolution, Rosetta Stone, Collective Identity

• School: Western University
• Department: Classical Studies
• Course: Classical Studies 2500A/B
• Professor: Beth Greene

Document Summary

The layers built up on a tell site when the same site is reused by successive human groups. Walls, pits, floors, and debris all remain in their stratigraphic sequence for archaeologists to find. Layers of soil and debris of human occupation build up on top of each other for a few reasons. Human action is the most common on sites of continued human use. Groups in succession bury, knock down, renovate, and reuse their own past structures and settlement systems. This causes a continual accumulation of soil, floor levels, and foundations all with their own distinct material culture left behind by the occupants in these strata. Hill type of archeological sites that go upwards. Dry environments: occupation occurring in one spot over thousands of years accumulation of soil creating hill. Natural process of soil moving around leads to slow accumulation. During archaeological excavation, layers of soil, walls, ditch cuts, pits, etc. are all given an identifying label or name.