Word: diggers
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Archaeology once appeared to be the domain of science fictioneers. The digger merely seemed to exercise his imagination in reverse. Instead of forecasting the farout future, he re-created the long-lost past. From a few hunks of bones he built dinosaurs. In the ashes of ancient camp fires he saw the life story of extinct societies. He re-created primitive artifacts from the flimsiest shards. Today, says...
...British Digger Don Brothwell, he and his colleagues go even farther than that-but they guess even less. From aviation to atomic physics, from electronics to chemistry, a whole host of sciences now help archaeologists to extend their observations with astonishing accuracy...
...miles northwest of Teheran. By night, they stand guard against raiding peasants, crooked local officials and stealthy professional thieves. The round-the-clock duty is wearing but necessary, for the location is one of the richest in archaeological history, and the entire valley around the mound has gone digger-daffy. Peasants are even uprooting their vines and fruit trees in a frantic search for ancient gold...
...about ten feet apart and three feet wide. These slices reveal the earth layers piled on top of one another, and the digging--a chore which falls on trained college and graduate students--proceeds horizontally from one trench to the other, one thin layer at a time. The digger usually pokes his way along with a large screw driver bent into a right angle. Occasionally he uses a spatula-like tool to skim off the dirt. As the work proceeds boards are placed down to prevent damage to the underlying stratum...
Keeping to one layer is fairly easy if its dirt has a distinctive color. Otherwise, the digger uses other criteria, for example the "feel" of the dirt-some layers are stickier or harder than others...