Word: soiling
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Estimated to have been between 20 ft. and 30 ft. high, the 175 million gallons of raging water released from the dam simply demolished the valley. In the dozen miles closest to the dam, its enormous force stripped the soil down to bedrock in places, lifted buildings, cars and trees and hurled them downstream. A frame church was seen riding the flood's crest like a flagship, before being battered to splinters. In one community the only building left standing was the company store. Several bodies were later found floating in the Guyandot some 20 miles downstream...
...exhaust the site before modern construction destroyed it forever. Under the pressure of a deadline, some ten diggers worked at a fast pace in the cold and rain all day. I barely knew what I was doing, but by the week's end, I could "read" a plot of soil and follow the edge of a pit or foundation...
Field archeology consists simply of tracing layers of occupational remains. The key to recognizing changes in the settlement or function of an area is differentiating between the various soil levels according to their color, composition, texture and topographical location. Complications are frequent, and disturbances of a lower level by a subsequent occupation are extremely common. For instance, medieval house foundations or wells may cut through underlying Saxon or even Roman levels to complicate the dating of all three inhabitations. Or materials of early civilizations might be robbed by later ones, and it is not unusual to find Roman tiles worked...
Next, finds are studied to establish the date of their origin. Finds include animal and human bones, worked stones, bits of metal, coins, glass, trading tokens and pottery. Although metal, unlike the other objects, encrusts with soil as it degenerates, it is identifiable by its density and bright color in the soil. If the soil is damp enough, organic material--leather, insects and their eggs, seeds, rope, wood, flesh, grass and flowers, cloth, animal and human feces--remains fresh and preserved. Non-organic finds, pottery and bones, are washed by the diggers, who quickly learned that potwashing with a toothbrush...
Today, several of its buildings are once again in ruins. Only a huge crater in the yellow clay-colored soil remains where the traditional medicine building once stood. Four patients were killed, blown apart. Three days after the attack the staff found the head of one patient 150 meters from the crater. Hardly any sign of the building remains...