Contacting an archaeologist
via e-mail
Type the address of the person
you are e-mailing here.
Don’t leave any gaps.
Type a short message or description in the subject
box. This allows the person receiving your e-mail to
know who it is from and what it is about.
* Talk with your teacher carefully about who to e-mail.
* Think about who would be the best person to help you and whether you could gain an e-mail address for that
person.
* Prepare the questions that you wish to ask beforehand – with your teacher.
* When sending your e-mail, make sure that your teacher reads through it before it is sent.
It would be a good idea to send a short e-mail at first, asking the person you are e-mailing whether they would
mind corresponding (talking) with you and answering further questions that you may send.
For more help on sending e-mails visit:
www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/course/email/send/send_text.shtml
www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/askbruce/articles/email/index.shtml
Here is how Year 7 got on once Mr.P had been contacted and their questions sent. The pupils
questions are in black. They were all sent in one go. What Mr.P said is in blue.
Dear Mr. P.
This is Richard, Sarah and Zoe from the Morgraig Survey Team. We contacted
you last week and you said that it would convenient for us to e-mail you with a few questions
about archaeology and how it will help us find out who built Castell Morgraig.
Hello Team. This is where I will try and answer your questions! However, I want you to
answer some of them yourselves, so forgive me if I answer certain questions with other
questions. You see, in archaeology there is always a lot of intelligent guesswork and with the
right information you and others on the project are just as capable as anyone else at deriving a
reasonable answer. So here goes…
Here we go:
If we were to excavate the site of Castell Morgraig, would the landscape upon which it is
built affect the process of investigation?
Do you think it would be easier to excavate a flat site in a valley right by a main road; or a
hilltop site miles from nowhere? Would a stony site be harder work than one lying in slight
sandy soil? Would a clay site right by a river be easier than a well-drained one half way up a
hill?
I think that there would be easier sites to dig than Morgraig, but I can think of worse
situations too. I’m sure that the clues that I’ve given to you will enable you to produce your
own answer to this question, which if you think about it is all to do with practical aspects of
excavation.
We found a round brick feature that looked like a cellar underneath the south-west tower. Do
you think that excavation would help us find out whether it was built by the Welsh or
Normans? If so, what results would you expect to find?
Brick feature? I have not seen any brick, only stone. But I know which structure you mean.
There is a similar one under one of the other towers too.
If, when excavating or examining an archaeological site, you find one thing lying on top of
another, what does it immediately tell you about the order in which they were laid down? Put
another way, think of your homes. Did the builders put the roof on after the walls were built,
or before?
So now you’ve worked out the order in which the structures were built, can you work out
whether one immediately followed the other, or whether there was a gap of months or years
between them? Did the round one originally stand any higher? Was it knocked down or
altered in any way before the later one was added?
It is these questions which only archaeological excavation can answer. If for example, you
found a 5cm layer of soil lying between the round structure and the one above, would that
make you think that there was a gap in the construction process or no gap? What would a
10cm layer of soil then tell you? And what if the soil contained dating evidence, say a coin
minted in 1250. Could the soil be earlier than 1250? Could the round structure below be
earlier than 1250? When you come to debate these points, don’t forget that a coin minted in
1250 could be lost in 1250 or 1251 or even in 1451. How useful is coin evidence? Do you
think pottery evidence might be more helpful (clue: How many of the pots you use at home
survive more than a handful of years before they get broken or thrown away?).
I think you would have to be immensely lucky to find evidence which would solve the
Welsh/Norman question. Pottery might provide clues. Structural evidence would assist – e.g.
lots of chamfered and decorative stones might point more to Norman than Welsh. In the end
it would probably be a judgement based on the balance of evidence – and that could mean
making use of negative evidence – e.g. if no chamfered stones were found and the building
methods looked pretty ropey, would any Norman knight want to live in such a place?
What results would I expect? Truth is, I just don’t know. In any case, it’s always best to
approach an archaeological mystery with an open mind.
Archaeologists use tools such as the brick layers trowel. Are there any specialist tools that
Archaeologists use?
There really are no limits. If what you’re excavating is buried under 5 metres of modern
rubble, you use a JCB. If it’s buried under half a centimetre, and it’s very delicate, you use a
paintbrush and a dental pick. If something is under a slab of concrete – a pneumatic drill and
pickaxe.
But there are other tools – more scientific ones.
* Resistivity and magnetometry – a ground penetrating electronics that can give a picture of
what lies below the surface.
* Dendrochronology – that’s tree ring dating.
* Carbon 14 analysis – dating organic material by measuring radioactive decay of a carbon
isotope.
* Pollen analysis and seed analysis
Analysing the remains of cess-pits to see what our ancestors ate and what parasites they had
inside their guts. I think there is a garde-robe (toilet) at Morgraig (the thing that looks like a
cellar) and that might just provide the best evidence. Cess-pits often turn up pottery and other
waste, either because in medieval times throwing things down the toilet was the easiest way
of getting rid of them; or because they accidentally fell down the toilet and no-one had the
courage to try and recover them!
We think that Castell Morgriag was built between1243-1267. Is there an archaeological
method of dating, rather than just a process of elimination with dates using historical records?
I’ve touched on dating methods in the answer above. However, no dating method exists that
can fix a 13th Century date precisely. Again, we would take the balance of evidence. For
example, if every coin or fragment of organic material, or piece of pottery, found at Morgraig
fitted a 13th Century date, I’d say we had a 13th Century castle. But we might find a range of
dates in the material found in an excavation, or they all might be 12th or 14th Century.
How long would it take us, approximately, if we were to excavate the site of Castell
Morgraig?
How long is a piece of string? You see, we don’t know what we might find. What if there’s
an earlier stone castle? What if there’s a timber castle beneath that? What if the castle site
extends half a kilometre along the ridge? What if there’s a Celtic hill-fort underneath the
castle(s)? And how many archaeologists will do the work? If we’ve got 200 diggers, we
could do it twice as fast as if we only had 100.
Thank you for giving up so much of your valuable time to help us try and solve the mystery
of Castell Morgraig. We will think about all that you have said and pass it on to the rest of the
group. We hope that we can speak to you again soon – and that we will have more of an idea
about the origins of Castell Morgraig.
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