A Brief Introduction to Field Excavation
by
Robert A. Mullins
Welcome to Tel Rehov! These pages are intended to serve as a beginning guide to field excavation. This is the first dig for most of you. Those with experience may find that the methods we use at Rehov differ from other sites where you have worked. Excavation styles are about as varied as the excavators themselves. And there are nearly always disagreements about how to attack a problem. But in the end, intuition and experience are big parts of excavating properly.
This introduction assumes no prior knowledge. It is also brief. This is because most of your learning will come through hands-on experience. If you want to learn more, two helpful books are W. G. Dever and H. Darrell Lance, eds. A Manual of Field of Excavation (1978) and Martha Joukowsky, A Complete Manual of Field Archaeology (1980).
A note of caution: Do not proceed on your own. Even if you have experience, or think you know what to do, always check with your supervisor first.
Why did people settle where they did?
There are at least four reasons why people located settlements where they did: (1) a hill for defense; (2) a source of water in the form of a spring, well or stream; (3) arable land for agriculture; (4) close proximity to trade routes.
There is another factor. If a town was destroyed and abandoned, later settlers might come and find the site attractive for the same reasons as the original people. They also had the fifth advantage of readily available building material. Thus, it is not uncommon to find stones from older towns pulled out of their context and reused.
What is a tel?
The word tel (spelled variously as “tel” in Hebrew or “tell” in Arabic) is cognate with the Akkadian word tillu, meaning a “ruin heap”. (Akkadian was the language of Assyria and Babylonia.) One occurrence of this word in the Hebrew
Bible is in Joshua 8:28, “And Joshua burned Ai and made it a tel forever.”
Site formation
Indeed, the anatomy of a tel clearly indicates that it is the product of towns built one on top of the other over a long period of time. It is, as Fredrick J. Bliss
once said in reference to Tell el-Hesi, A Mound of Many Cities. Many of the more famous tels contain the ruined remains of 15-25 settlements, e. g. Hazor, Beth-Shean, Megiddo, Gezer, and Lachish.
Tels are formed by successive cycles of construction, occupation and destruction or abandonment of a site. Each cycle brings about the deposition of at least one, but usually many more units (or “layers”) of debris.
In this regard, some find it helpful to think of a tel as a complicated layer cake. To take a sample, the archaeologist “cuts a slice” out of the tel, exposing the various layers in succession. In this way the archaeologist is able to examine each layer that makes up the cake. There is also an undisturbed record in the “uneaten” portions that remain. These preserved layers not only serve as a check on what has been removed, they also provide intact parts of the tel for future archaeologists to dig with better methods.
The job of the archaeologist is to offer the most reasonable interpretation of
the excavated portion of the site. He or she does this by defining each construction- occupation-destruction/abandonment cycle together with any associated architecture, pottery, or special finds like jewelry, scarabs or cylinder seals. Pottery and small finds like scarabs are the most useful items for dating. You will learn more about how ceramics are used for dating in the pottery sorting sessions.
Each cycle of construction, occupation and destruction or abandonment is called a “stratum”. This is a term borrowed from geology, where layers of sediment form distinct layers or “strata” in the rocks. The Grand Canyon in Arizona would be one classic example of a stratified deposit. Geologists use fossils preserved in the rock strata for dating in the same way that archaeologists use pottery in the stratified layers of a tel.
The scientific study and interpretation of the strata which make up the mound is known as “stratigraphy.” The orderly removal of a tel’s contents according its units of deposition is called a “stratigraphic excavation.”
Sometimes a more complicated stratum may be subdivided into “phases”. This is because one stratum may have lasted a long time, let’s say, a hundred years. As can be expected, people expanded their homes or made alterations. Maybe they added a room here or took out a wall there. Perhaps they laid down new floors when the old ones sagged too much. These alterations must be recorded and explained.
Recording the process of excavation
Keeping track of all these units of debris is not easy. We help the process, though, by insuring that each piece of architecture or layer of earth is given a number. It is much easier to say “Floor 134 abuts Wall 236” than to say “the pink clay floor abuts the 50 cm wide wall built of gray field stones at the north end of Square J-3.”
The bank of numbers we assign to features (e. g. walls, floors, storage pits, ovens, etc.) or to layers (e. g. brick debris, stone collapse, ash layer, etc.) are called locus numbers (plural, loci). You will hear a lot about locus numbers on the dig.
When there is a change in the soil, the old locus is closed and a new number is assigned. Let’s say we have been digging in fallen mudbrick debris 1378 (representing the collapse of the walls of a house on a floor). Suddenly we reach a thick deposit of ash. The supervisor will close locus 1378 given to the brick debris and assign the next available number (let’s say, 1385) to the ash layer.
Distinguishing this ash layer, which may be lying on a floor, is important to the archaeologist. This is because restorable pottery found in ash on a floor is better for dating the last use of a building than random potsherds (broken pottery fragments) collected from brick debris high above the floor. You may have a chance to observe situations like this while excavating and learn more about it.
What will you find when you get into the field?
Tel Rehov is a 120 dunam (30 acre) site. That’s twice the size of Megiddo and three times the size of nearby Beth-Shean. Indeed, Rehov is one of the largest tels in the country. Like Hazor to the north, the mound consists of an upper and lower city. It is the upper city that is most visible from the main road.
We have selected five different “areas” (or what Americans often call “fields”) for excavation. These places were chosen because we believe they will provide us with the most information about the cultural history of Rehov.
Area A is located in the upper city or the acropolis, where palaces and temples were often located in antiquity. Excavations here revealed remains of Early Arabic and Medieval villages. Beneath this is Iron Age occupation of the 8th century BCE, whose demise probably relates to the campaigns of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III in 732 BCE. Area B on the northern slope of the upper mound forms a stratigraphic link with the lower city. The other areas are situated in the lower city, where excavations have yielded remains of Iron Age buildings and pottery of the 10th-12th centuries BCE. Here we want a cross-section of the mound’s occupational history (a slice of the layer cake). We also want to learn more about the gate area, the nature of the fortifications, how the spring was accessed as a water source, and to have a sample of the structures that stood here.
The layout of your excavation area
You will find that your area has been marked by grid stakes into 5 x 5 meter “squares” resembling a checkerboard. However, the space you actually excavate in is smaller, generally 4.5 x 4.5 m in size or smaller, since we leave a one-half meter wide catwalk called a “balk” (or “baulk” if you are British) between the squares.
These standing walls of debris are left intentionally as a vertical record of what
you have dug through. As you go through each layer, or remove a floor, you will find
that your supervisors will mark these layers preserved in the balk with a tag. This is to
remind them of what once existed there. Your supervisors will also draw some of these
balks or “sections” as a visual record for the excavation archives. These drawing are very useful for interpreting the site stratigraphy.
A visual and written record of what is being excavated
In fact, there are three dimensions to the graphic recording of an excavation. The “top plan” gives the horizontal dimension (a bird’s eye view), while the “section drawing” presents the vertical dimension. “Heights” taken with a surveying level enable the archaeologist to relate these layers and architectural features to specific elevations above sea level.
If the archaeologist has recorded these three dimensions properly, he or she should be able to place all of the walls and floors back into their original location on paper. These plans are supplemented by photographs. Sometimes video footage is taken as well.
Your supervisor will spend a lot of time writing down what is appearing in the ground as you dig. Since excavation is also destruction, proper and accurate recording is paramount. The supervisor not only writes notes in the field, but uses them to write daily summaries into a computer journal each evening. At the end of the season a final summary is written. Later on, this will become the basis for a final published report.
The kinds of things you will find as you dig
When you start digging, the first thing you will encounter is topsoil. In many cases, the walls and floors of buildings are just below the surface. But the actual depth depends a lot on the nature of post-depositional activity over the years.
Buildings of biblical times
Most buildings of biblical times were made of adobe (mudbrick) on foundations of field stones. At Rehov, however, nearly all the walls lack stone foundations. This is harder, since stone foundations are a clear indication that you have reached the bottom of a wall. Sometimes part of the mudbrick superstructure still survives. In most cases, though, the bricks collapsed long ago and decayed into an undifferentiated pink mass, leaving only the floor and stone foundations intact. This means that before you reach the floor, you will be digging through roof collapse and the decay of mudbrick walls. The depth of this accumulation is impossible to determine. In some cases it only a few centimeters. At other times it can be a meter or more deep.
If you encounter the stumps of mudbrick walls just below the surface, you can be fairly certain you will soon reach a floor - if it is still preserved. If the brick walls have not survived, there is no way of knowing whether you will reach the floor first or the stone foundations. This is because some builders set the foundations in the ground entirely below the floor, while others set the floor level near the height of the topmost course of stones. So you must pay attention. If you reach a floor, the foundations may be a bit further down - or vice versa.
In cases where the mudbrick superstructure survives, you must be careful not to dig through the bricks. One way to recognize a brick wall is to note differences of coloration in the soil. Most brick walls are more pink or red than the surrounding soil. By scraping the surface well you will eventually see the wall line. In cases where the tops of the bricks are badly decayed, you may have to dig down a few centimeters and scrape the top of the wall with a large hoe or a trowel to find the wall line. Don’t do this on your own. Your supervisor will help you with this. Sometimes spraying water helps the color of the bricks to stand out better. You want to distinguish the wall line, because once you do, you want to go down on either side down to floor level.
Walls and Floors
The walls are generally of mudbrick with or without stone foundations. This is typical of towns located in the inland valleys where mud is readily available. If stones are used, they are usually gathered from the surrounding fields and riverbeds. On the other hand, towns situated in the hill regions of hard limestone or basalt are often built entirely of stone. In some cases these stones are roughly hewn. At other times they are skillfully carved into a nice rectangular shape known as “ashlar masonry”.
To set the foundations, the builders dug a trench (called a “foundation trench”) to set the foundations. This gave stability to the building. The height and width of the foundations often depended on the size of a building. Most stone foundations are two to three courses high by one to two rows wide.
At Rehov, chances are that the majority of floors will be of beaten (or tamped) earth. Since earthen floors are the same color as the surrounding soil, they are not so easy to detect - which is why you must dig carefully. Digging through a floor happens, but it is an archaeological no-no. Due to human activity, organic residues are often left on the floor. So if you see an ash covered surface or evidence of colored residues, it is probably a floor. Yet, there are many earthen floors with no indication of activity; only evidence of a compacted surface.
Sometimes the floor is well preserved and still attached to the wall. At other times it is preserved only in small patches. In the later case, you can dig past a floor level without realizing that there was a preserved patch only one foot away. This is why we will stress in the “Principles of Excavation” section below that you must clear the entire square before going down any further. In this way, you reduce the chances of missing a floor due to poor preservation.
Other kinds of surfaces you may encounter are
those made from lime plaster, cobblestone and flagstone. How a floor looks
often depends on whether it was inside a building or located outside in an open
courtyard.
Back!
Pottery and bones
Broken pieces of pottery are the most ubiquitous find at any site. While they may seem unimportant, they are of great value to the archaeologist, since they provide one of the key ways of dating an occupation level. Even the tiniest sherd could be an import from Greece or Cyprus that has great historical importance. So collect all the pottery you find and place them into the designated pottery bucket. Later, you will wash these fragments and sort them with your supervisor to decide which ones should be kept or discarded. You will also learn about how the typological development of pottery can be helpful for dating occupation levels.
Bones are important too, since they can give us a picture of the people’s diet. Collect all the bones and place them in a marked paper sack. This includes small bones which may belong to fish or birds that are important to the zooarchaeologist.
It is often difficult for beginners to find a balance between the two extremes of either picking through every inch of dirt to find the smallest sherd or bone, or just mindlessly scooping the dirt into a bucket to dump. Train your eyes and develop the necessary concentration to not ignore the bits of pottery while still digging efficiently.
Small finds
The term “small find” usually refers to artifacts other than pottery. They include beads, figurines, earrings, cylinder seals, and scarabs. These can be quite small, so you need to stay alert and train yourself to detect the slightest difference in color or shape that may indicate a special find. Otherwise, it may disappear into the dirt bucket and be reburied in the spoil heap forever.
Cylinder seals and scarabs are especially valuable for dating purposes. Many are just few centimeters long - so be alert. And don’t be surprised if your supervisor treats you to an ice cream or an ice cold beer for finding a cylinder seal or scarab!
The dream of every archaeologist is to find something written. There is no reason why we shouldn’t find written records at Rehov, since we are digging in periods when writing was used. “Clay tablets” (usually from the Bronze Age) are often palm size - or even smaller - with cuneiform (wedge-shaped) signs impressed into the clay. “Ostraca” (usually from the Iron Age) are broken pieces of pottery with ink writing on them. These served as the notepads of antiquity. Later on, the information could be transferred to papyrus rolls. It is these notepads, though, that have survived the ravages of time. In rare instances, odd looking symbols or signs may be incised onto a sherd or some other kind of artifact. When in doubt, check it out! Many inscriptions are found during pottery washing. Wipe off any mud clinging to the sherd with your fingers first, then check it for writing before scrubbing the surface with a brush.
The problem of pits
The process of stratigraphic excavation has been complicated by the tendency of our ancestors to dig holes in the mound as dumps for garbage or for the storage of food. This introduces (as you can imagine) material of later date into the earlier strata. So while digging remains from the time of Moses (Late Bronze Age), you may be finding pottery from Solomon’s day (Iron Age IIA).
Pits can appear anytime and anywhere. Some are easier to detect because they are lined with stone, clay or plaster. Most, it seems, are unlined and quite difficult to identify. You may see a tell-tale outline in the soil, aided by the slight difference of coloration between the pit contents and the surrounding earth. If so, point it out to your supervisor. He or she may ask you excavate its contents separately from what lies around it. Also, since soils in a pit have generally accumulated into it, the contents are usually softer and less compacted than the surrounding soil. So a “soft spot” in the place where you are digging may be an indication. One way to know that you have missed a pit is by the unusually high amount of pottery from a time later than the era you are digging. An unusual jumble of pottery, stones and other rubble in one area of the square may also indicate the presence of a pit or some other disturbance.
The basic tools you will use
1. Large pick. Use the chisel end of the pickax since it is more efficient and does less damage than the pointed end. It is also recommended that you not raise the pick too high above your head. You want to avoid driving the pick too hard into the ground (though there may be cases where you must). The general technique is to let the momentum of the pickax do its own work.
2. Hand pick. As with the large pick, use the chisel end of a hand pick. A hand pick is reserved for finer work such as cleaning between stones or breaking up the soil near a floor. Many will grasp the pick horizontally and use it to pull the loosened dirt towards them, break up the soil, and help detect small objects.
3. Large hoe. A highly versatile tool for scraping, leveling the square, and scooping freshly picked earth into buckets. While scooping with a large hoe, be alert, and be sure not to mistakenly pull pottery and valuable small finds into the dirt bucket.
4. Trowel. The best ones are the 5” American Marshalltown trowels (45-5) or the shorter British versions. Beyond 5” in length you begin to loose the control you need to scrape well. Experienced archaeologists find that they use the trowel more than just about any other tool. For work close to the ground, a good combination to use is a trowel and a large dust pan. This allows you to see the dirt more easily. You also don’t scoop so much soil in at one time.
5. Brush. Those with soft bristles are best for sweeping your square after you have picked, leveled and scraped well. Soft brushes are also good for cleaning smashed pottery assemblages, walls, etc. When cleaning, we recommend that you begin at the highest point first and brush down to avoid duplicating your work.
6. Wheelbarrows. These are used for dumping the dirt in a designated location. It is best to not let the wheelbarrow get too full. Otherwise it becomes harder to push. You also risk hitting a stone and loosing your load.
7. Sieve. An important piece of excavation equipment are dirt sieves. Small objects like scarabs, cylinder seals and beads can be hard to detect, so we often dry sieve buckets of dirt when approaching a floor or while clearing a floor. You supervisor will decide when to sieve soil from your square. Even when not sieving, stay alert for small objects, as these are important for dating and for making inferences about patterns of trade and exchange. When special objects are found (whether through sieving or while digging in your square, they are given their own special basket number and then packed away for cleaning by a conservator in Jerusalem.
The care and feeding of balks
1. At Rehov, you will find that balks vary in width from one-half meter to one meter wide. The system we have adopted is to place a one meter wide balk every ten meters (i. e. every other square). The wider balk enables easier passage, so these should be the ones you normally use for walking between squares. Using the one meter balks also helps preserve the narrower half meter balks.
2. In a new square, the area you are excavating in will be marked by string. Never dig beyond the balk strings. In fact, it is best to start digging a little inside the line set by the string. Later, after you have dug down some and established the walls of the square, you can trim back the balk to meet the string.
3. Always keep your balks straight and cut true and square. If necessary, you can use a plumb bob to help maintain vertical sections.
4. It is best to trim the balk as you go. If you wait until it dries out, the balk is more likely to cave-in. It is also easier to maintain a balk if you trim as you go.
5. Never undercut a balk. Never pry objects out of a balk. If you see something that looks important, tell your supervisor.
6. When cleaning or straightening a balk, it is best to scrape in oblique motions from top to bottom. Any pottery that falls out should be put into a separate bucket. In most cases, don’t sweep the balk with a brush since it can obscure the soil layers. Clean the top of the balk by moving the dirt with a trowel away from the edge of the section so the dirt doesn’t fall into the square.
7. When trimming a balk, never remove the nails for the balk tags. Instead, pull out the nail slightly, trim around it, and then press it back in.
8. Never sit on a balk while excavating or at any other time. This breaks down the top edges which is important for preserving a stratigraphic record.
Principles of excavation
No “brief introduction” can anticipate all the potential problems you may encounter in a dig and the methods used to resolve them. Experience is a big part of knowing what to do.
1. Try to anticipate what tools you’ll need in advance when you arrive at the tool bin in the morning so you don’t waste time running back for a certain tool.
2. For the most part you will use a large pick for digging through fills and other kinds of debris down to the floor level of a building. You will then switch to small tools such as hand picks and trowels for the finer work.
3. Don’t hurry. Archaeology requires a systematic and purposeful approach. Don’t dig in patches here and there. Never dig holes.
4. Start at one end and proceed evenly across the whole square. If nothing appears that requires special attention, begin again and proceed in the fashion stated above. All along collect the pottery and bones and look for small finds. Don’t forget: that scarab or clay figurine may win you an ice cream cone!
5. You normally proceed from one end of the square to the other so newly excavated areas won’t be stepped on. Always pull the dirt towards you. In this way you see the finds better and don’t step on the just cleared area.
6. The standard arbitrary depth is usually 5-10 cm. But this depends on the situation. In many cases, the compactness of the soil determines the increment you will dig. The only time you should not dig in horizontal increments is when you reach a floor or specific kind of layer that requires you to follow its angle or slope.
7. The basic digging sequence is pick, scrape, level, brush: You first pick to loosen the dirt. You then scrape the loosened debris with a large hoe into a bucket and level the surface as you go. Any pottery is placed into the pottery bucket. In cases where you are nearing a floor, it is a good idea to scrape with a trowel into a dust pan, and transfer the dirt from there into a bucket. You may encounter valuable small finds that could be missed using a hoe. The final step is to brush the entire area before proceeding down the next 5-10 cm increment. But this must be done sparingly. Sometimes brushing obscures what is in the soil below. Experience is the best teacher in this regard.
8. When using a pickax, use the chisel (broad) edge to loosen the soil. Avoid raising the pick to high above the level of your head. Pull the soil toward you so that you can make a visual check of what you’ve done. Hold the pick loosely to allow the weight of the tool to do as much of the work as possible. This is not only easier on you, but it reduces the chance of damage to the artifacts.
9. Notify a supervisor when any soil change occurs. Scrape the surface well with a trowel so a supervisor can check it. You use the flat edge of a trowel to scrape the surface and to pull the dirt towards you. Don’t forget that while pouring dirt into the bucket, check for pot sherds or small finds.
10. If you encounter weeds or roots, cut them with a knife - do not pull at them.
11. It is a good idea to use the large pick or hoe to lightly to break up any lumps of soil before scooping it into the dirt bucket. Who knows? You may find a clay tablet or scarab inside one of those clumps!
12. Dirt from an occupation area such as a floor or close to a floor should be dry sifted before being dumped. Consult your supervisor about when and how often you are to do this.
13. Be systematic. When a new layer is reached, or anything unusual is encountered, stop digging and tell a supervisor. A new layer may be noted by a change in soil texture or color, the appearance of an architectural feature, or a change in artifacts.
14. Never dig down into a new layer unless instructed to do so. Instead, clear off any remaining earth or objects from the later (i.e. higher) stratum, so that none of the material will get mixed.
15. When your pottery bucket gets half full, request a new bucket. Your supervisor will then bring you an empty bucket marked by a tag which records the basket (or bucket) number, the locus in which you are digging, your square coordinates, and sometimes the type of locus you are in. Don’t let the bucket get more than half full since there is a greater risk of the buckets falling over if they get too full.
16. Open your eyes. Collect anything that looks strange. Sometimes it is nothing. At other times it is an important find. And don’t forget, clay tablets, which can be as small as 5 x 5 cm in size, are easy to overlook since the color of the tablet closely matches the color of the surrounding soil.
17. Collect all faunal (animal) and botanical (plant) remains. This means gathering any bones or seeds you encounter. Your supervisor will assign you a “bone bag” for this purpose. Most bones you find are of sheep and goat. Botanical remains are treated separately by putting samples into a cardboard box or plastic ziplock bag.
18. If you enounter charred grain or seeds, it is a good idea not to touch them. Tell your supervisor, since he or she may want to gather them for carbon-14 analysis. This requires a special method of collection that will avoid contamination. Seeds and grains ( “short-lived samples”) are generally better for carbon-14 than wood.
19. Grain and wood samples not collected for carbon-14 are still kept for identification and study by a palaeobotanist. This goes for any other kinds of plant remains such as phytoliths (a silica body found within the cells of certain plants, especially grains and grasses, which are helpful for reconstructing the original flora of a site). Your supervisor may also want to collect soil samples for pollen analysis.
20. We also collect cultural remains that are not ceramic or special finds. This includes grinding stones and the querns that go with them.
21. When cleaning the area at the beginning or end of the day, or before photography, it is best to clean the higher areas first before the lower ones to avoid moving the same dirt twice. Use a soft bristle brush and a large dust pan to sweep.
22. Each person is responsible for helping to set up the shades each morning and for taking them down at the end of the day. No one leaves the excavation area at the end of the dig day until the Area Supervisor dismisses you.
23. Do not steal objects. It may be nice, but a stolen find means the loss of valuable scientific information. Most people respect finds and don’t try to pocket them. This is just a reminder that despite what one sees on Indiana Jones movies or reads in a popular biblical archaeology magazine that shall remained unnamed, finds are cultural heritage and are not meant for someone’s private collection.
By the way, it also against the law!
Classification of Loci by Function
(From Gitin, Gezer III - Text: 40-1)
There are four general phases of stratification:
(1) pre-construction; (2) occupation; (3) destruction; (4) abandonment.
1. Pre-construction
a. back-fill
b. back-fill and leveling
c. back-fill and terracing
d. terracing and installation foundation
2. Occupation
a. Stage One: Building.
Includes loci contained within walls, installations, the thickness of plaster floors, fills, pits, foundation trenches and sediment layers associated with specific building elements
(1) back-fill
(2) construction
(3) floor make-up
b. Stage Two: Habitation
Includes loci of floor layering or laminae, pit dug from and used with contemporary surfaces and sediment deposits whose genesis was a domestic or industrial activity, e.g. a layer of pulverized olive ash.
(1) floor build-up
(2) floor build-up or resurfacing
(3) floor build-up or surface thickness
(4) use-activity
c. Stage Three: Latest-use
(1) final surfacing
(2) latest use
Includes those final floors or surfaces that contained either sherds found lying flat on top of a surface used as ceramic mettling or whole vessels and/or smashed vessels found in situ on the latest- use floor or surface of a phase. Also contains loci with cooking and dug ash deposits sealed between layers of two floors and pits whose stratigraphic position indicated that they were among the latest activities in an occupation phase.
3. Destruction
a. latest-use
b. destruction debris
Includes pottery found in situ on the floor of a destroyed building and the pottery found within the destruction debris. Ash layers sealed between floors of a given building whose stone evidenced burning.
4. Abandonment
a. exposed areas.
Includes loci of cultivation soil.
Internal Analysis Method (Gitin, p. 42)
Whole pottery forms found in situ can with a few exceptions be readily assigned to the latest-use of the occupation floor on which they were found. However, whole pottery forms and sherds which were out of context required special considerations - the internal analysis method. With a fill sealed by a floor or other structural element of an occupation phase (e.g. subfloor fills), one can draw certain stratigraphic conclusions. If a local fill used for back-filling and building purposes and homogeneous pottery then in all likelihood the fill and its sherds came from the preceding occupation phase. If the material below an occupation phase contains numerous types of sediment and sherds of multiple periods, its considered to be an imported fill. This type of fill is associated with an extensive pre-construction phase, could have come from anywhere on the tel and from several earlier strata.
A sherd contained in a fill of the same ceramic type as a whole form found in situ on the surface that sealed the fill, could be identified as being among the latest ceramic types in that fill. But in general, sherds within local fills sealed below a surface have to be stratigraphically and chronologically earlier than the pottery attributed to that same surface. The latest pottery in local fills is the material normally considered indicative of and assigned to the ceramic horizon immediately preceding the one associated with the occupation phase of the surface that sealed it.