Analytical excavation

Abstract

Antiquity in 1957, in the midst of an ‘Evolution Number’, published a bold article by Professor Richard Atkinson on ‘Worms and weathering’. Often quoted since, but all too little absorbed, its message at the time was clear: ‘All of us recognize . . . that a site consists of a sequence of deposits, some formed deliberately and usually rapidly by man, and others more slowly by nature; and that some of the processes of formation, such as erosion and filling by the plough, are still continuing today. But there seems to be a widespread assumption (though it is difficult to be sure of this, since such things are seldom discussed) that once a constituent layer of a site has been formed, and sealed by another layer above it, it becomes immediately fossilized . . .’ Professor Atkinson spoke of his own post-Darwinian observations as ‘shots in the dark’, which ‘may not always be very accurate; but at least they serve to wake sleepers from their beds’.