Tools that Archaeologists Use
On May 17th, 2019, a group of anthropology students from Foothill College went to Big Basin to practice and hone their archaeological skills. Before heading off to the site, students got to learn archaelogical skills such as learning how to use tools. Before going in-depth as to what we learned at Big Basin, we have to talk about the archaelogical tools we used:
The Digital GPS: The Digital GPS allows you to take highly accurate GPS points on the map. This is useful when anthropologists want to take accurate pinpoints of where each item is on the map.
Scale: Before touching an item in archaeological, we use a type of scale to measure. If you don’t a scale on you right now, you can use a pen to accurately measure how long something is.
Metal Detector: The metal detector release electric pulses that allows us to see what underneath the ground. It can allow us to see what’s underneath each layer of dirt.
Compass: This is simple. We use a compass to do map surveys. We also use a compass so we know where to go or where to even begin in a excavation.
Another tool that isn’t listed in archaelogy is that before we even begin excavations and such, we do a map survey. So, we walk around the excavation to get a sense of the terrain and we then draw our site on a piece of paper. After getting a sense of the area, we then use the tools listed above to start our excavation.
