Feature (archaeology)
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Feature in archaeology and especially excavation has Several different but allied meanings.A feature is a collect of one or more contexts representing some human non portable activity that generally has a vertical characteristic to it in relation to site stratigraphy. Examples of features would be pits,walls and ditches. Elements of the sequence that had a planar charcater to them such as; layers, dumps or surfaces are in the main not refered to as features. Examples of surfaces would be; yards, roads and floors. Features tend to have a intrusive characteristic or associated cuts. this is not definitive as surfaces can be referred to as features of a building and free standing structures with no construction cut can still features . Middens, a localized dump would also tend to referred to as a feature due to its discrete boundaries compared to a leveling dump that stretches over a substantial portion of a site. To a degree feature is fuzzy concept that will change depending on the scale of excavation
[edit] Generic feature types
Features specific to certain architecture types or eras such as trilithon for the purposes of this article are not considered generic. Generic features are feature types are those that can come from a broad section in time of the archaeological record if not all of it. Generic types can include:
- Cuts
- Re-cuts
- Pits
- Post holes
- Stake holes
- Construction cuts
- Robber trenches
- Walls
- Foundations
- Ditches
- Drains
- Wells
- Cisterns
- Hearths
- Stairs and steps
- Enclosures
- Lynchets
- Graves
- Burials
- Middens
- Pit-houses
[edit] See also
- Archaeological context
- Excavation
- Archaeological field survey
- Single context recording
- Harris matrix
- Archaeological plan
- Archaeological association
- Relationship (archaeology)
- Cut (archaeology)
- Archaeological section
- Fill (archaeology)
[edit] References
- The MoLAS archaeological site manual MoLAS, London 1994. ISBN 0-904818-40-3. Rb 128pp. bl/w
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