Why Post Holes are a Dumb Part of the Archaeological Record

Okay, not really. Depending on where you are, it might be the majority of what you find. But they can be really hard to find, and if not done right, you can't really say definitively that something is a post hole. But we're all frustrated, so right now post holes are dumb.

Take a look at the pictures, read the captions and figure out what you're looking at. Because at zone 4 there are two competing ideas attempting to explain what is going on here, and they are drastically different. So decide what you see, and why you think that's what you see, and then I'll tell you what I see, and what the people of the other idea see.

 A portion of zone 4. The large tarp is covering the site of the previous excavation, from a few years ago.

 Closer view of the previous excavation site. It was protected with the landscaping cloth before being re-buried.

One of the walls. Note the large stones and roots coming out of the ground and walls.

The notes from the previous excavation state that those holes you see are post holes, and that there was possibly the remnants of a structure found. From those notes the Spanish decided to expand upon the previous excavation site and the zone is much larger than what you see in the pictures. Now we know almost next to nothing about the previous excavation, and they are not playing nice, so we're not going to get their notes. The problem this leaves us with is that without proper documentation we've no idea if these holes in the ground are post holes, or just holes. There is a very specific way you excavate a post hole, and test for differences in the soil, and all this is documented because archaeology is a destructive process and once you excavate that hole its gone. So this leaves us with maybe they are real, maybe they aren't, we can't really know at this point.

So we are excavating the surrounding area, and have hit what appears to be a layer of rocks. On one side the rocks are quite large, and the rocks moving away from the large rocks get smaller. The Spanish believe that this is a structure, and while brushing down this area to get a better look, they see a slight indent in the ground. So they trowel it out a big, and suddenly its a post hole. We believe that we just watched them dig a hole there. We argue, no agreement is reached, and the post hole is forgotten in favor of uncovering the large rocks they believe to be part of a structure. This leads to yet another problem, because these large rocks look suspiciously like the exposed bedrock you can see on the nearby beach. The smaller rocks are made of the same material, and to us appear to be erosion from that bedrock.

So there we have it. One side believes that what we are finding is man made. The other side believes it is natural. The techniques being practiced by the Spanish here aren't helping either. Digging out a what you think is a post hole is one of the last steps you would do. Now, its not our site, so it doesn't really matter what we think, but we are finding suspiciously few artifacts on this side of the zone. The far side, however, is holding much better prospects.