Written by Michał Górzyński, Project Archaeologist (Heritage Research)

During my studies and after graduation I worked on a number of excavations conducted by universities, museums and private companies in Poland. This gave me a basic understanding of the methods used in archaeological fieldwork and I then assumed that these methods would be the same elsewhere! That’s why after my first day of work on an archaeological excavation in Britain, I was so surprised to find many differences between the methods I had learnt in Poland and the methods used in the UK.

The basic structure of field investigation (excavating features and then recording them and the artefacts) is the same, but the methods of how to excavate, and the type of tools to use are different (except maybe using shovels!).

For example let’s use the excavation of a pit. The first step is the same, make a line to divide the feature in two and then start excavating one half to get a section through the feature. After that, according to Polish methodology, you would cut a box shape around the feature to explore the surrounding stratigraphy. This results in one half of the feature staying untouched and the other half showing a full section plus a small area around it. This is opposed to British fieldwork methods where only the feature is half-sectioned and the surrounding ‘natural’ is left untouched (unless there are other archaeological features).

The next step is to record the feature by drawing and photographing the section. In Poland, there is often only one person is doing the recording, most often the site supervisor. There are no context sheets, all the necessary information is inputted into excavation notebooks. When this is done the half of the pit which is left needs to be excavated, but this time following the cut of the feature.  Again, after excavation of this half, drawing and photographic documentation is undertaken by the field supervisor. All measurements on site are taken with a dumpy level and staff and it is rare that a GPS is used. In my work in the UK, as is common on most archaeological excavations, the features are recorded by the excavator using context sheets, photography and drawing, as well as a GPS to mark where the features are spatially within the site.

I’m really happy that I have had the opportunity to learn Polish and British fieldwork methods, because both make me better archaeologist. I am now enjoying my time working on a secondment in the Heritage Research Team at Allen Archaeology where I am building on my knowledge of British archaeology.

if you’re interested in finding out more about British fieldwork and the work we do at Allen Archaeology have a read through some of our previous blog posts!