6.1: Surface Sites


Egypt Exploration Society's
 work at Naqada

In the public imagination, archaeology is seen as a profession that is site-focused  and primarily concerned with excavation. This approach fails to see that the investigation of landscapes and environment requires a more holistic approach and especially the use of broader surface evidence. Much work of archaeologists consists of fieldwork and survey  as well as the use of aerial photography to elucidate and document the current state of earthwork sites. Geophysical and cropmark evidence is also a form of archaeology that examines the surface of larger areas without digging.

A huge amount of fieldwork is also done on surface sites by various forms of fieldwalking (also called pedestrian survey) which aims to recover and document patterns of material in the surface layers of sites, exposed by processes such as river erosion, deflation and ploughing. This can cover large areas of cultural landscapes and reveal much about changing patterns of settlement concentration and land utilisation in a long-term perspective and link that with natural features and geological processes in the landscape.

Surface survey may also be used to determine the likely information content of a site before it is selected for excavation, for example in response to a threat, in order to utilise resources properly, we need to know in advance whether its worth it, what is there, what kind of information can it yield.

 Surface survey however needs to have data, if the data have been selectively and randomly removed by undocumented artefact hunting, no amount of fieldwalking can replace the missing information or correct the distortions of the 'surface signature' of the sites caused by persons unknown removing random items that they find collectable. Macro and microregional studies of settlement patterns, site zonation, and character from surface survey will be rendered impossible if the evidence has been randomly distorted by the activities of tens of thousands of people exploiting the archaeological record as a source of collectable items, which necessarily includes many diagnostic metalwork types. This is the archaeological record. This is the evidence of past landscape use. This is what needs preserving as a resource.


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