Archæol. A deep trench dug to investigate the stratigraphy of a site.

[1923 Glasgow Herald 13 Sept. 9/5 What is taking place in Berlin now is what the French call ‘sondage’... The Chancellor is really endeavouring to see how the land lies.] 1930 Discovery Aug. 259/1 Against the south angle of the northern harbour a fairly prominent mound invited a sondage, and it proved to conceal a temple more perfectly preserved than any hitherto found in Mesopotamia. 1952 K. M. KENYON Beginning in Archaeol. v. 102 The method of sondage is sometimes employed, in which a shaft of comparatively limited area is sunk..with the avowed object of establishing what is the succession of cultures. 1955 L. WOOLLEY Alalakh i. 6 In 1948 and 1949 Mr. Sinclair Hood made sondages at Tabara al Akrad. 1977 P. BARKER Techniques Archaeol. Excavation 76 We have seen that holes dug into extensive layers can be disastrous for their subsequent interpretation, and anyway the information gained by a ‘sondage’, however small, relates only to the area of the sondage.