Archaeologists have for some time pondered the ways in which the archaeological record forms. How does the material that we dig up get to look the way it does?

Working as an Archaeologist, I have met several non-archaeologists who didn't understand the processes involved in the formation of the archaeological record, e.g. how a building or site that is not swamped by silt, landslides or volcanic flows can come to be buried so deeply. But this lack of understanding is not always confined to the non-professionals. Only relatively recently have archaeologists appreciated that a site's archaeology is not a direct record of what went on there, but instead may have been distorted by a whole series of processes.

Pages in this category:

• Archaeological Excavations of the Future
• C-Transforms and N-Transforms
• Laura Spinney's "Return to Paradise"

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