Viewing post #487248 by Horntoad

hazelnut said:Horntoad: "As an archaeologist, I would imagine you mainly saw a material that needed to be gotten out of the way to get to the objects you wanted to find, so to you it's just dirt."

I guess this is a very common misconception of archaeology--that we are after objects in the dirt/soil. Actually, archaeology is about is about discovering information in undisturbed soil. . It is actually ==rather than 'objects' --much more exciting to find a buried stratum of black soil, we analyze it for human activity, often finding selected seeds that tell us about the diets and even gardens of people who lived thousands of years ago. But what you said about making dirt out of organized undisturbed soil--yes archaeologists do that. Once the soil is excavated, it has no information value--its just dirt. This is why we call archaeology a "destructive science". Its sort of like 'no-dig' gardening. Once you dig it, you have disturbed the soil processes you actually need to make things grow.

I think L. Wittgenstein said, 'The meaning of a word is its use' and soil and dirt are not used interchangeably, as we have learned in this discussion.

Good luck in your gardening efforts, RoseBlush1. It sounds like a great challenge--the kind that when you win there is the ultimate satisfaction.

No misconception on my part. I just made a slightly simplified statement to make my point about perspective. I realize you are not Indiana Jones looking for valuable artifacts, but your are looking for objects that give clues into past civilizations. My point was that it is 'primarily' the objects contained in the soil that you are interested in, not the soil itself, thus your different perspective and choice of terminology.