How to be an Archaeologist: Context Sheets Part One

It was probably Sir Mortimer Wheeler (or some other famous archaeologist with an impressive moustache) who once said: “Archaeology is an experiment that can only be conducted once.”
Or something profound and pessimistic like that anyway. Whatever the case, the point is that, despite being informative and educational and what-have-you, the business of archaeology is incredibly destructive. To get down to all that interesting stuff involving Romans and Vikings and mediaeval monks etc., centuries of less exciting stuff, such as soil and sand and clay, has to be removed, heaped up into a pile and then chucked willy-nilly back into the hole, making one hell of a mess for future excavators who might actually be interested in those layers that we find terminally dull and hard work to dig through, because, who knows, we might well be missing something important in our current state of archaeological ignorance.
I think it was Mortimer Wheeler who said that.
Or was it Geoffrey Wheeler?
Then again, Geoffrey Wheeler might have been the bloke who used to present Top of the Form. (By ’eck! I’m showing me age now lad that’s f’ sure.”)
Whatever, here’s a photograph of Sir Mortimer Wheeler and his impressive trained moustache.
Or is that Terry Thomas?


(Get on with it! You’re starting to annoy me now! Editor)
To get to the point, it’s the responsibility of every excavator to record as thoroughly as possible exactly what it is they’re excavating. It might be boring filling in forms (well…actually it is boring filling in forms, we don’t deny it) and taking spot levels and devising stratigraphic matrixes (don’t ask…we’ll get round to them eventually) but it has to be done, because once you’ve dug through it no matter how hard you try you’re never going to put it back together again molecule for molecule in exactly the same way that you extracted it.
Even Dustin Hoffman, or Rainman, or whatever he was called, would have his work cut out just to recreate a vague semblance of the original structure of topsoil, for example.
So, with that in mind, it’s time to introduce our reader to the all important context sheet, a piece of paper so disturbing to archaeology students that it clears blocked bowels and wields more fear than a letter to Charles the First from his old friend Oliver.


You might want to click on the image above, unless you’ve got bionic eyeballs.
As you can see, the context sheet is basically a way of recording every last iota of information concerning a particular context. Each context, no matter how small, even ‘cuts’ which aren’t visible in reality, has its own individually numbered sheet, all of which when combined create a complete stratigraphic matrix for the site.
I’m losing you now, aren’t I? I can tell. You’d be tuning-out in droves if you actually tuned-in in droves in the first place. To be honest it’s really very simple, as most of these things are.
Let’s start with the definition of a context, shall we?
“A context is that which can be identified as standing alone but relative to other contexts.”
I think it was Mortimer Mouse who said that.
A wall is a context. It’s a structure, but it’s also a context.
A layer of soil or clay or sand is a context. It’s a layer, but it’s also a context.
A big Roman urn with a naked lady painted on it…well that’s a small find.
But anything that basically constitutes a layer, a structure, a cut, or the fill of a cut, in the ground is basically a context.
What’s a cut? I’m so glad you asked, because this one’s a bit trickier to explain.
A cut could be a posthole, or a ditch, or a depression in a clay floor made by a very fat monk with a lethargic disposition. To put it another way, it’s anything that cuts into another context.
Here’s a collection of photographs that should, hopefully, explain the differences between a cut, a layer, a structure and fill. Again, it might be an idea to click on the image for a larger version otherwise your eyes will start to water.


Right, starting with the top left hand photograph. That’s a cut…in this case the ditch running alongside our Roman road in Stalmine. It’s a cut because it was ‘cut’ by somebody into the base clay. The clay itself would be classified as a layer. The soil that came out of the ditch is classified as fill. The cut is invisible because it doesn’t physically exist…because it’s a cut. Look…it’s a bloody hole, all right? It has no quantifiable mass. It’s just the imagined gap between the base clay and the fill, but it still exists because somebody cut it.
Okay…so that’s cleared that up then.
Moving along to the top right hand photograph. Now these are examples of layers. Layers like this are also known as stratigraphy, because effectively they’re strata. A layer is a context that isn’t a structure…because a structure’s a structure and needs to be classified separately.
Bottom left hand photograph. That’s a structure. In fact that’s a layer of cobbles at Bodkin Hall. But it’s not a layer really…at least, not in archaeological terms, because it’s a structure.
Finally, the bottom right hand photograph shows a big pile of soil that’s been dug out of our Roman wayside ditch at Stalmine. That’s fill, because it was filling the cut.
Does that make sense now? Good, because each one of them is a context, and each of those layers in the top right hand photograph is a separate context, and every context needs its own context sheet and its own individual number.
Now it’s time to show you how to fill a context sheet in.
Then again perhaps not.
I’ve been getting complaints recently about these articles going on for too long, so you’ll just have to wait until the next posting to find out what you’re supposed to write on the ruddy things.